


Empire State of Mind

by Pigzxo



Category: Shameless (US)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Angst, Fluff, M/M, Smut
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-08-09
Updated: 2016-09-20
Packaged: 2018-08-07 14:22:26
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 33
Words: 46,933
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7718179
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Pigzxo/pseuds/Pigzxo
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Ian Gallagher, son of the President of the United States Clayton Gallagher, wants to go off to university with reduced security. He wins the argument -- or so he thinks.</p><p>Mickey Milkovich, the youngest agent in the Secret Service's employ, is tasked to go undercover as Ian's roommate in order to keep him safe. But all bets are off when he finds out Ian's secret.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

Ian had been trapped one way or another for his entire life. Maybe it wasn’t fair to blame that on his father; Clayton Gallagher was a good man, a man who had seen too many injustices in the world and rose to fix them. He fought through multiple elections where everything from the crazy exploits of his extended family to the illegitimacy of his only son had been thrown in his face. Through it all, he managed to hold his head up high, make jokes, and go from councilman to senator to President of the United States. It wasn’t fair to blame a man like that.

            But Ian blamed him anyways.

            The White House had been one of Ian’s least favourite places in the world since he had stepped foot into it for the first time a little over a year ago. He could deal with the Secret Service agents lurking in the shadows of his school, the security a couple steps behind him when he went for a walk, and even the awkwardness of trying to carry a conversation while two armed men stood behind him. He’d been used to all of that since he’d been old enough to leave the house by himself. Security was nothing new and if this security had better style, he could hardly fault them for that. But the White House itself was a different story. The White House was the one place in the entire world where Ian’s security disappeared into the shadows and then stayed vanished. No one followed him through the halls and yet someone was always watching him. He was free to walk from room to room, but someone somewhere knew exactly where he was. Ian was used to being watched, he was unnerved if he _wasn’t_ being watched, but the fact that people were watching him from where he couldn’t see them rubbed him the wrong way.

            Which was why Ian walked down the halls of the White House looking over his shoulders. And why he usually ended up bumping into someone before he made it to his father’s office.

            Luckily, this afternoon, Fiona caught his arm before he knocked into a wall or a pillar. As she did, he heard a Secret Service agent against the wall whisper, “Firebird is on his way.”

            “Ian,” Fiona said, almost managing to blur the agent’s words. Her hand on his elbow was too tight, but he liked it. She was one of the only people he knew who didn’t treat him like he was breakable. His half-sister and older than him by six years, she handled his father’s front desk now and sent all her paycheques back to Chicago to take care of her siblings. “The President is on a call right now, but he’s very excited to see you and wants you to wait outside his office. Can I get you anything? Coffee? Tea?”

            “Fi,” Ian said. “He’s not excited to see me. He saw me last night at dinner. You know as well as I do that the only reason he would make me come and see him in his office is because he doesn’t think I’ll yell at him where his staff can hear me.”

            “Yeah, well.” Fiona shrugged. “He’s a fucking idiot, but he’s the President, so what are you gonna do?”

            “I’m gonna yell at him,” Ian replied. He stopped in front of Fiona’s desk and tapped his fingers on it. “So you might wanna make sure all the doors are shut and anyone who shouldn’t hear it is a good thirty or forty feet away.”

            She pulled a post-it note from the screen of her computer and held it out to him on her finger. As he read the words, _Keep people away from the office_ , she opened a file and started to scan it. After a few seconds, she crumpled the note in her hand and threw it into the trash.

            “Bad then?” Ian said.

            “I don’t know anything about it.”

            “I don’t believe you.”

            Fiona smiled. “Believe it or not, I know almost fuckin’ nothing about what goes on behind that door. I take calls, I bring coffee, and I get people on the phone if the President needs them. You wanna know the inner workings of your dad’s mind? Ask Charlie.”

            Ian glanced over his shoulder at Charlie, his father’s personal aide. The man, only two years older than Ian and built well enough to row crew, stood at his desk while he shuffled files around. Due to an unfortunate mix-up with the cider order at the White House Christmas party last December, Ian preferred not to speak to Charlie.

            The door to the Oval Office opened and several uniformed men walked out. Each one nodded to Ian, who stared blankly into their wrinkled faces as they passed. Then he looked up expecting his father to be framed in the doorway, but met the eyes of the Chief of Staff instead.

            Really bad, then.

            “Mr. Gallagher,” the Chief of Staff said. The Chief of Staff was an old friend of Ian’s father with a name too long to bother with and a number behind it that exceeded five. Because of that, Ian often referred to him only by his initials: PKR.

            Ian inclined his head and walked into the office. His father stood behind his desk, his back to Ian and his hand on the phone like he had just come off of a call. Anger curled in the pit of Ian’s stomach, sickened that this was the meeting they were having. The Chief of Staff was there to keep things professional, not familial. His father was not his father, but the President of the United States who had barely any time for this conversation. And Ian had no doubt that if he walked over to the residence right that instant, he’d find Lucy waiting in the living room, ready to calm him down.

            “What do you want?” Ian asked.

            Clayton looked up at him, worn from just over a year behind that desk. A twinge of pity shot through Ian but he stamped it out hard, reminded himself why he was most likely there.

            “I can’t give you the reduced security,” his father said.

            “Bullshit.”

            “Ian—”

            “You can, you just don’t want to,” Ian snapped.

            “There are lots of things that go on in this White House that—”

            “What’s the threat?” Ian said. He glared at his father, practically forgot PKR was in the room. “If it’s so concerning that you can’t deal with me going to college with only two Secret Service agents on my tail, than I don’t understand why I haven’t been briefed on it.”

            “Ian.” Clayton sighed.

            PKR cleared his throat and Ian shot his wild glare his way. The man straightened his tie, a blue polka-dotted one Ian had given him for his birthday, and said, “There are any number of threats against you at any given time, Mr. Gallagher, most of which are dealt with before there’s any reason to brief you. Sending you away to college only adds to the number of threats against you and your father wishes to keep you safe.”

            “I’m surprised the head of the Secret Service isn’t here to tell me himself,” Ian said. “He could go over safety protocol and agents versus crowd numbers and all the stats with me so that I’d understand.”

            “Ian—”

            “This is bullshit,” Ian said. He looked back at his father, stepped up to the desk. “It’s a tiny little state school no one’s ever heard of. There are less students on campus than there are employees in the White House. No one there is going to try to hurt me. I don’t want a cohort of agents on my tail night and day reporting my every move back to you!”

            “You know that’s not their job,” Clayton said. “Their job is to protect you and they will keep your secrets for you. In no way will they impair your ability to have a normal college experience, Ian.”

            “Except for the fact that there will be five of them surrounding me at any given time.”

            “It never bothered you in high school.”

            “I was at a fucking boarding school in the middle of nowhere for rich kids who shit money,” Ian said. “The President’s son was gum on their fucking shoes. Five Secret Service agents was a less impressive guard than what the oil baron’s sons had.”

            Clayton pressed his thumb and forefinger to the bridge of his nose. “Can we not have this fight again?”

            “You’re the one who brought it up.”

            It was hard to say that it was ever silent in the Oval Office. Beyond the windows, behind the copse of green bushes, several agents stood at the ready, their ear pieces constantly buzzing with the movements of the staff throughout the building. Fiona and Charlie’s movements could be heard through the door, both of them typing, walking, clicking, talking to each other and laughing. Then there were the people in the hallways, their heavy steps across the marble floors, their shouts of urgency.

            “I want reduced security,” Ian said. “Two agents across the hall from me, plain clothes. They can tail me to my classes and to extracurriculars and even hang out with my friends if you want. But only two of them. No more.”

            Slate green eyes stared back at him. “You can’t have that.”

            “Dad—”

            “I’m sorry, Ian, but that’s the way it is. We’ve all had to make sacrifices—”

            “What the fuck kind of sacrifices did you have to make?” Ian said. “You’re the fucking President of the United States, leader of the free world, and because of that I’m in goddamn prison for the rest of my life!”

            “We can talk about this some other time,” Clayton said.

            “Yeah, sure,” Ian said. He shook his head and took a step towards the door. “When do you want to talk about it again? After you make sure Lucy’s on your side? Once you’ve handpicked five agents you think I’ll like? How about once I’ve already moved into my dorm and my roommate, the guys across the hall, and the guys on all sides of me are agents? Can we talk then?”

            He stepped out the door and slammed it before his father could reply. Fiona’s desk was empty, but Charlie looked up at him. “Oh, fuck off,” Ian snapped. Then he started down the hall, calling back, “Might want to tell security that I’m about to leave the building.”


	2. Chapter 2

“Mickey,” someone shouted.

            Mickey looked up from his desk at just the wrong moment and missed the picture he was supposed to click. Muttering a curse under his breath, he looked for the source of the voice and saw his boss beckoning him from the doorway. So it was going to be that kind of day.

            His suit buttoned, he stood and headed over to his boss. “Sir?” he said. “I was just finishing up an exercise on spotting irregulars in a crowd and—”

            “The President would like to see you.”

            Mickey blinked. Never in his life had he thought he would hear those words. True, technically he worked for the President and he had expected to see the President several times throughout his career once he finished his training, but he had never thought the President himself would request to see him, Mickey Milkovich. After a moment, he managed, “Excuse me?”

            “Don’t keep him waiting, Milkovich.”

            Mickey nodded but stayed frozen in the doorway for several more minutes before he found the strength in his legs to move. A thousand thoughts whirled through his head, none of them good. Although he had no idea what he could have possibly done to piss off the President so early in his employ, since he had only been on duty for two months after six months of training, he was certain he must have done something wrong. He had stood in front of the wrong painting in the hallway or let his gaze linger on the First Lady too long or tripped up in front of a reporter and given away state secrets by accident. While he was relatively sure none of those things had happened, paranoia ran rampant in his family and he couldn’t stop himself from thinking up even more ridiculous scenarios as he made his way from the main surveillance offices of the White House towards the Oval Office.

            He stopped in front of two desks and looked between them. Both were empty, their occupants probably long gone so late at night, but he didn’t presume the ability to walk up and knock on the door of the Oval Office. Not now, not ever.

            The agents standing in the hall outside had given him a look but made no indication that they knew he was supposed to be there.

            A woman walked into the room, her dark hair flailing about in crimped curls. She barely looked up at him, flipped through files on her desk. She said, “Can I help you?”

            “My name’s Mickey Milkovich. I’m an agent here. I was told the President wanted to see me.”

            She pressed a button on her phone and said, “I have an Agent Milkovich to see you, Mr. President.”

            “Let him in.”

            The woman walked over to the door and held it open for him. Mickey thanked her quietly and stepped into the Oval Office. “Mr. President,” he said and extended a hand to the man, who looked impeccably old in an off-black suit. “To what do I owe the pleasure?”

            Clayton Gallagher was by no means an impressive man. Mickey had known that, he thought, but it was different to see the Commander in Chief in person, so small, so beaten down. He offered Mickey a seat, which he took, and a drink, which he declined because he was still on duty. The President poured himself a scotch and sat down in an armchair, crossed his legs.

            “Mr. Milkovich,” the President said. “I’m told that you’re the youngest agent currently in my employ.”

            Mickey blinked. “I didn’t know that, sir.”

            “How old are you?”

            “I’ll be twenty-two in three weeks, sir.”

            The President nodded and set down his drink. “You’ve completed all your training?”

            “Yes, sir.”

            “Then I have an assignment for you.”           

            “Yes, sir.”

            With hesitation, the President looked down at the seal on the floor between them. There was a catch in his breath every time he spoke, something inherently nervous about him. Mickey had never noticed it in any of the man’s speeches, but it was clear as day now. He wondered absently if this was even the same man that went in front of the cameras.

            “My son, Ian, is a headstrong boy. He gets it from his mother,” the President said. “And he’s told the First Lady that if I don’t reduce his security for college, he won’t go.”

            Mickey listened to the static voices in his earpiece. He could tell the President that his son was currently in his bedroom, blasting some godawful music that made the agent on duty want to quit his job.

            “I need you to help me with this.”

            “I don’t know your son, Mr. President.”

            “That’s exactly why I need you. Because my son has to go to college and get a degree, but I’m in no position to spend hours fighting with him over his security right now. The world’s in shambles and it’s my job to put it back together. So what I need is an agent I can trust beside my son at all times.”

            Mickey blinked. “Certainly there are agents with more experience more suited to the task, sir.”

            “Ian wants two agents across the hall from him,” the President said, as if he hadn’t heard Mickey at all. “And if they’re across the hall, it’ll be all too easy for him to sneak out after he closes his door or go off to class without alerting them or do any number of things I can’t have him doing for fear that he might be kidnapped or shot in an attempt to get to me.”

            “I’m not sure what you’re saying, sir.”

            The President’s eyes settled on Mickey, hard as rock, unfeeling. “I want you undercover as his roommate.”

            “What?”

            “If he doesn’t know you’re an agent, he’ll be more inclined to bring you places, to let you in on his life. If he slips his agents across the hall, he won’t be able to slip you. And if he doesn’t know you’re an agent, he won’t want to slip you. Do you understand, Mr. Milkovich?”

            Mickey stared at the President and then nodded. “Just... if I could say one thing, sir?”

            “Of course.”

            “You’re a fucking idiot,” Mickey said. He didn’t even blink as he stared at the President. His hands tight in his lap, he shifted slightly to have a better view of the room. “Outside that window there are five different agents. There’s another two outside each door into this office. Your son has grown up with security like this and he’s been around agents long enough now to pick them out in a crowd. You put anyone on him and he’s gonna know.”

            “Not if you’re any good at your job.”

            “Not if I’m terrible at my job.”

            The President said, “Are you refusing a direct order, Mr. Milkovich?”

            “No, Mr. President,” Mickey said. He licked his lips, wished he had a drink in his hand to steady his nerves. “But I’m telling you that something like this is never going to work. And if your intention is to give into your son while having this go on in the background, well... he knows as well as I do that America doesn’t negotiate with terrorists.”

            “Are you calling my son a terrorist?”

            “At the moment? Yeah.”

            It took a long moment for the President to nod. In that moment, three significant movements of staff had taken place and the President’s son’s godawful music had stopped playing. There were now three agents on the ground outside his window to make sure he wasn’t going to feign going to bed and then slip out to do god knows what with god knows who. Mickey had to admit that from what he’d heard about the kid, he liked him a lot.

            “You’ll be trained in undercover ops,” the President said. He swirled the ice cubes in his untouched drink. “We’ll get you set up at the college well in advance, give you an early move-in date and a cover for it so you can get your bearings, figure out how you should be acting. I have full confidence in your ability to fool my son, Mr. Milkovich.”

             “If you say so, sir.”

            The President stood and Mickey stood with him. He shook his hand again and the President walked over to his desk, his usual sign that he had dismissed someone or so Mickey had been told. He headed for the door but paused when he heard the President say, “And, Mr. Milkovich, I hope you don’t mind me saying this, but it might be essential to you playing your role correctly.”

            Mickey turned at the door. “Yes, sir?”

            “I’ve read your file and I know where you grew up. I’m sure you know that my family comes from the same side of town. If you want my son to believe you, hell, if you want him to like you, I suggest you go back to your roots, Mr. Milkovich.”

            Mickey’s lips crooked a smile. “You tellin’ me you want your son roomin’ with Southside trash, Mr. President?”

            The President smiled. “I’m saying he’d never expect an agent from that neck of the woods.”

            “Anything else I should know?”

            The President shook his head and Mickey left.


	3. Chapter 3

Overall, Ian contributed eight hours of arguments, three meetings in the Oval Office, four family members coming to his aid, and the annoyance of PKR towards his success in getting his father to let him go to college with only two Secret Service agents. Fiona had pushed his father over the edge on the roommate side of things and got him to let Ian go into the general roommate pool. So other than the two agents across the hall and the multiple members of the White House staff moving him in, Ian was now, officially, just another college kid.

            The bed on the right side of the room had already been claimed and the whiteboard on the door had FUCK OFF written in big black letters. A member of the staff had tried to wipe it off, but Ian had insisted that it stayed up, a smirk on his face. Whoever his roommate was, he already liked the guy’s style.

            Once everything was in the room, Ian dismissed the staff. The two agents that lived across the hall entered the room. Both wore plain clothes but had posture that made them look like they had invisible boards strapped to their backs. The woman was tall, lethally muscular, with short blonde hair and a spotty smile. Her name was Gretchen. The other was a thin man with wire spectacles and the kind of smile that made Ian’s toes go numb. His name was Paxton.

            “All right,” Gretchen said. “Now that you’re settled, Paxton is going to go down the hallway and handout protocol sheets to everyone on the floor. I’ll be just across the hall if you need me and I’ll keep my door open. I suggest you do too, unless there’s a reason for you to close it.”

            Ian stared at her blankly. “Such as?”

            She smiled. “No need to be cute, Mr. Gallagher. We’re just doing our jobs.”

            “And my roommate?”

            “He’s already been briefed.”

            Smothering a snort, Ian said, “Let me guess? He was briefed three or four weeks ago when the roommate draw went out and you guys found out his name through the school.”

            Gretchen nodded and she and Paxton exited the room. With a sigh, Ian turned towards the box on top of his bed, the first of many. Just staring at the boxes made him wish he hadn’t told the staff he could unpack on his own. But then again, having your dad’s hundred employees help you unpack your room certainly wasn’t close to a normal college experience. Neither were protocol sheets, but there was nothing he could do about that.

            As he ripped into a box, he tried to remember which one held his bedding. The White House staff had labelled the boxes meticulously, which would have been helpful if Ian had been able to read any of their handwriting.

            Ian heard a burp behind him and turned. A guy in a muscle shirt and low hanging jeans stood in the doorway. He paused for only a second, blue eyes flicked over Ian, before he bounced down onto his bed with another burp. “The President’s son,” he said, an edge to his voice. “Imagine my surprise.”

            It took Ian a moment to respond. When his father had said that he would be put into the roommate draw, he hadn’t believed it until that very moment. Because there was no way that out of all the possible potential college students the White House could have handpicked to sleep in the bed next to him, this guy was it. Ian’s silence caught the man’s attention and he turned his head on his pillow, blue eyes jewels in the afternoon light.

            “Did they vet you?” Ian blurted.

            The guy laughed. “Yeah. Let me tell you. A couple Secret Service agents show up for you in my neighbourhood and you’re expecting fucking cuffs, not an interview.”

            “I’m Ian.”

            “Got that.” He pulled a cigarette from his pocket and his jeans inched lower, exposed more of his striped underwear. With the cigarette placed between his lips, he said, “Mickey.” Then he picked up a lighter from the bedside table.

            “You can’t smoke in here.”

            Mickey rolled his eyes. “What, you gonna tell on me, Gallagher?”

            “There’s a smoke alarm.”

            “I disabled it a week ago.”

            Ian stared up at the smoke detector. The light still blinked green and everything looked like it was in place. But as Mickey’s smoke floated into the room, nothing happened. “I don’t think the agents are gonna like that,” Ian said.

            “Fuck ‘em.”

            A snort of laughter left Ian and he saw the edge of a smile curl onto his roommate’s lips. “Give me that, would you?” Ian said. He held out his hand.

            Mickey’s eyes met his for a second and he puffed out a deflated ring of smoke. Handing over the cigarette, he said, “They let you smoke in the White House?”

            “God no,” Ian said. He took a drag, felt the smoke fill his lungs, and let out a hacking cough. Mickey laughed at him. “Fuck off. First one in nearly three fucking years.” Another drag and he steadied his hold on the cigarette, felt his nerves die down a little. He handed it back.

            “Surprised anyone gave a shit about you smoking given your crazy family.”

            “Yeah, well,” Ian said. He sat back on his bed and shrugged. “You got a family like that and the family America’s actually putting in the White House has to be flawless. No smoking, no drinking, no drugs. We put as much distance between ourselves and the other Gallaghers as humanly possible during the campaign, for the sake of our reputation.”

            “Someone write that shit for you?” Mickey chewed on the bottom of the cigarette, a smile on his lips.

            Ian smirked. “You got questions about my life? About the White House? Get them out of the way now before my agents say I’m not allowed to tell you shit.”

            Mickey rolled up into a sitting position and blew smoke in Ian’s face. “What kind of questions?”

            “I don’t know. The usual. Who writes what you say to the press? How much free time do you have in a day? Does the Secret Service follow you to the bathroom? Doesn’t the Secret Service have better things to do than follow you to the bathroom? How do you have sex in the White House?”

            Mickey cocked an eyebrow. “How do you have sex in the White House?”

            “You don’t.”

            Blue eyes stayed on him, steady. The cigarette burned between Mickey’s fingers as he rolled it up and down their length. Patches of skin at his knuckles were lighter, whiter than the rest of his skin. “But...” Mickey started, stopped. “Like before the White House? Right?”

            “I was fifteen when the campaign started.”

            Mickey stared at him for a moment longer and then a puff of a laugh came out of his lips. He covered it quickly, the hand with the cigarette going up to his mouth, hot paper jarring against his teeth. Through laughter, he said, “You’re a fucking virgin?”

            “Shut up.”

            “Shut up? I’m gonna tell the frickin’ press that,” Mickey said, a bright smile on his face. “The President’s son is a virgin. I can see the headline now... Might actually gain your dad some support with the Republicans.”

            Ian shook his head. He wished he was unpacked just so that he’d have something to throw at Mickey. But he had nothing and was trying hard not to blush and harder not to say something nasty about the Republican Party. His dad had enough support on the other side, probably more support than he should being a Democratic President. But with a gun-loving extended family, it was hard not to gain some support from the right.

            “I’ll float that as a campaign strategy,” Ian said, the words more bitter than he intended.

            Mickey snorted. “Don’t bother. I’m not in the business of keeping Democrats in power.”

            “You didn’t vote for my dad?”

            “God no.”

            “Seriously, were you vetted?”

            Mickey looked up at him, a shit-eating grin on his face. “Hard to believe, right? But I haven’t broken any laws, never sent you a death threat or a deranged love letter, and I’m not on any watch lists.” He breathed in the rest of the cigarette and then ground the stub into the bedside table. “Apparently, according to your request, that’s all they could vet me for.”

            “I’ll get you on a watch list by the end of the day, then,” Ian said. He turned to rummage through the box on his bed, could feel Mickey’s eyes on his back.

            “You want some help with that?” he said.

            Ian glanced over his shoulder. Mickey was spread across his bed, more skin showing than completely necessary, another lit cigarette already between pale lips. Since Ian had last looked at him, he’d run his hand through his black hair and now it stood on end, a Jackson Pollack against his pillow.

            Ian said, “What? You gonna supervise?”

            “I was gonna actually unpack a couple fuckin’ boxes but if you wanna be difficult,” Mickey said.

            “Fine.”

            “Fine what?”

            “Fine, you can help.”

            Mickey looked up at him for a solid second without blinking. That would get disturbing really fucking fast. Then he shrugged. “Think I’ll just supervise, mini prez.”

            “Don’t call me that.”

            “Give me a Secret Service memo that says not to.”

            Ian breathed out a laugh. Try as he might, he really couldn’t seem not to like the guy. He reminded him of visiting his half-siblings in Chicago, the mess of the kitchen, the bustle of half a dozen kids under foot, and the ride-or-die attitude of the Southside. He felt more at home with Mickey then he had at any elected official housing unit in his entire life.

            “What did that memo say anyways?” Ian asked. He threw knickknacks across his bed, barely bothered to look at them as they went. “The one they gave to everyone in the hall?”

            “No pictures, no talking with reporters, no midnight pranks, no coercing you into compromising situations, no papers under the door, no packages left—”

            “You memorized it?” Ian interrupted. He was openly staring at Mickey now who had barely moved on the bed. He lay on his back, his cigarette lazy between patchwork fingers, and recited the list like he had it written in Morse code on the popcorn ceiling. Blue eyes met Ian’s now, gentle with disbelief.

            “I got it a while ago,” Mickey said. He shrugged like it was no big deal and took another drag on his cigarette. “My dad threw a shit fit about it so, you know, it stuck.”

            “Why?”

            “He’s against government censorship.” Mickey’s lips popped around the end of the cigarette. He’d barely removed it from his mouth to say the words and now his gaze flickered over to Ian, bright. With a hint of false exasperation, he said, “Republicans.”


	4. Chapter 4

Mickey had to admit that it was fun to tease the President’s son. It was fun just to be off his best behaviour for the first time in almost a year. He’d slipped only once with his recitation of the memo, but he could keep that under control. He was in the habit of memorizing random pieces of paper anyways, so if he kept it up, Ian would file it under slightly weird things his roommate did instead of heavily suspicious things the guy who might be a Secret Service agent did.

            While Ian was in the shower, Mickey sat on the end of his bed and spoke with Gretchen and Paxton. He had Ian’s schedule in his hand. “And I’m taking Shakespeare and French with him, right?”

            “Right,” Paxton said.

            “Couldn’t he take something fucking normal like Chem or Math?” Mickey said. “I’d do that.”

            “You’ll do this,” Gretchen said.

            Mickey rolled his eyes. “Well, of course I’ll do this, but I’d _prefer_ to do that.” He paused and sighed when Gretchen fixed her steely glare on him. “Where are we on classroom protocol? Does he still want you two waiting by the doors?”

            “Yes and it’s been explained to him why that’s unsafe.”

            “Could you do it for the classes I’m in?”

            Gretchen and Paxton exchanged a glance. Paxton coughed, a spasm that made his hidden muscles clear under the university t-shirt he had on. “He’d probably figure that out pretty quickly, that we’ll leave him alone with you and not anyone else.”

            Mickey shrugged. “I’ve been vetted.”

            “Have you been trained to take a bullet for him?”

            _Yes,_ Mickey almost replied, but he bit his bottom lip. His eyes fell back to Ian’s class list, to the dates and times and room numbers. He’d been given the schedule a few weeks ago and the Secret Service had picked through all the members of each class in order to place Mickey in the classes they thought had the highest threat levels. Because Shakespeare was really fucking threatening.

            “All right,” Mickey said. “You guys gonna be following us around for orientation?”

            “We’ll be with the group,” Gretchen said.

            “But I’m by his side the whole time, right?” Mickey said. He glanced between the two older agents and cracked a smile. “If I have to be on ‘im constantly, he’s gonna get the wrong idea.”

            “Learn how to make a fuckin’ friend, Milkovich,” Paxton said.

            Mickey snorted and was about to say something else when a movement at the door caught his eyes. Quickly, he folded Ian’s schedule and shoved it into the back pocket of his jeans. Ian stood in the doorway, a towel wrapped around his waist, dripping. If it took Mickey a moment to say anything, he blamed it on the precariousness of the situation.

            “You gonna tell these fuckin’ assholes to leave me alone?” Mickey asked. He forced himself to meet Ian’s eyes and not let his gaze fall down the length of his body. He was the President’s fucking son. Even Mickey had to draw the line somewhere and that was the fucking line. “They want to take my fuckin’ phone so I can’t record shit.”

            Ian looked between the two agents and licked his bottom lip. “Seriously? Isn’t that a little bit overkill, you guys?”

            “We’re just protecting your privacy, Mr. Gallagher,” Gretchen said. She’d shifted into an at ease position, every inch of her military training evident in her actions.

            “While you’re at it, you might want to brush up on people’s rights,” Ian said. He stepped into the room and walked over to his bed. Neither agent moved. “I’m gonna fucking change now, so if you guys wanna get out and shut the door?”

            “No one in this room’s gonna be bothered by your naked ass,” Mickey said. He popped another cigarette between his lips, breathed in the scent of unlit paper. His consumption of them had gone up dramatically in the last two days, but it had yet to hit his chain-smoking record from junior high. Gretchen shot him a look that said _you better not give the President’s son lung cancer_ and then headed out of the room with Paxton on her heels.

            Ian dropped the towel as soon as the door closed and Mickey averted his eyes, watched smoke ring out of his mouth towards the dead smoke detector. Gretchen and Paxton had already given him shit for that. It put Ian in danger. It made their response to a fire slower. All it really did was stop kids from smoking in their dorms, but Mickey had promised to put it back together, which he wouldn’t do. No need for Gretchen to know that.

            “We should get going,” Ian said a minute later. Mickey glanced over as Ian pulled a green t-shirt over his head, porcelain skin disappearing under the fabric. “What time does it start?”

            Mickey glanced at the clock. “We gotta minute.”

            “It starts in ten minutes.”

            “You really think they’ll start without you?”

            Ian sighed, grumbled something about special treatment, and headed for the door. Mickey got to his feet fluidly, flicked his cigarette into an empty trashcan. Out the door, Ian headed down the hall at a breakneck pace. Mickey shot a look towards the agents across the hall and headed after him, hot on his heels.

            “It was a fuckin’ joke,” Mickey said. He slapped Ian on the shoulder, harder than he should have, and he flinched. “Surely a campaign or two has taught you how to take a fuckin’ joke?”

            Green eyes glanced his way, deadpan. “Sure,” Ian said. “What joke do you wanna make next? You’ve covered privileged rich kid, so you wanna call me a bastard now? What about a soulless ginger? You wanna call my half-siblings monsters, unclean, crazy people? All of it’s fair game, not like the news hasn’t said it before.”

            Mickey rolled his eyes. His fingers curled, itched for another cigarette. Every time he looked down at his hands now, he caught on the patches of uneven skin, the marks of where his tattoos used to be. “You need to lighten the fuck up,” Mickey grumbled, half under his breath.

            “I’ll take that under advisement.”

            Resisting the urge to fucking deck the guy, and Mickey really wasn’t above decking the President’s son, Mickey picked up his pace to keep at Ian’s side. His eyes scanned the empty rooms of the hallway, looked for movement. Most people were already at the quad, ready to go for their tours. When they got outside, after four flights of stairs, more people crushed around them, their footsteps loud on the concrete. Flashes of cell phones and iPods caught Mickey’s eye, took a second to dismiss before he moved on. He resisted the urge to reach out and take Ian’s arm to make sure they didn’t get separated in the crowd.

            They reached their assigned group and the leader smiled brightly at Ian, who ducked his head at the attention. Mickey met the eyes of everyone in the circle, silently signalled that they should look away. It worked for the most part. Or maybe the presence of two Secret Service agents at their backs did that. Gretchen and Paxton both had guns by their sides, the posture of killers. Mickey just looked like a backyard thug, the quickest weapon at his disposal the pocket knife in his jeans.

            He took a breath. The worst person in the crowd seemed to be a little blonde girl who had her phone out, her thumbs brushing wildly across the letters. People were bound to know Ian was here anyways, so her gushing to her friends wasn’t that big of an issue.

            They started across campus, weaved through several buildings. The leader of the tour talked and her eyes flicked back to Ian every few minutes to make sure he was following. For the most part, he was on his phone and ignored everything the tour guide had to say. Mickey itched to get out of there. If Ian wasn’t paying attention, he sure as hell wasn’t going to pay attention. And with the constant drone of the leader’s voice as background noise, scouting exit strategies became as boring of a game as spotting out-of-state license plates on a back road drive.

            Still he memorized every building’s layout the best he could. When he had a chance to step away from Ian, he took pictures of the building maps. He noted every classroom where one of Ian’s classes was and failed to find only one of them. By the time they got to the barbecue at the quad, he was starving, his eyes bleary, and he wondered how he had ever thought he was cut out for following around the President’s son for eight hours, let alone his entire life.

            So when he lost Ian in the crowd, he wasn’t really all that surprised. Scared shitless and suddenly wide awake again, but not surprised. He muttered a curse and pulled out his cell phone. “Gretchen,” Mickey said. “I lost him.”

            “How do you lose a six foot redhead?”

            “I don’t know,” Mickey snapped. He looked at the line-up again, the hundred people between him and food. How he had lost Ian, he had no idea. Most of the group was still with him, even their leader less than three feet away. “Maybe it’s got somethin’ to do with the massive amount of fuckin’ co-eds around me.”

            Gretchen sighed. “He got moved to the front of the line and now he’s sitting by a tree eating a hot dog.”

            “He’ll still be there by the time I’m through the line?”

            “I’ll let you know.”

            Mickey hung up the phone and rubbed the bridge of his nose. Thirty hours into the assignment and he’d already lost him once. And it was his job not to lose him. Not Gretchen’s, not Paxton’s, his. If Ian did anything stupid, anything out of line, it was his job to follow him around, to be there. And if the guy kept getting pulled out of fucking lines because of his last name, that was going to be a hard thing to do.

            Twenty minutes later Mickey got through the line. He’d heard nothing from Gretchen, so he looked for Ian among the trees and he spotted him not far from a crowd of kids playing hacky sack. Mickey plopped down in front of him and said, “Next time they do that, you could take me with you.”

            Ian looked up at him without a smile. “You want in on the gifted life of a Gallagher?”

            “It’s the only reason I’m nice to you,” Mickey said.

            “Then stop being nice to me.”

            Mickey stared at him, didn’t flinch at the venom in his words. With a shrug, he swallowed a bite of his hot dog and yelled, “Hey! The President’s son is a virgin!” Ian’s jaw dropped and Mickey added, “Who wants to be the lucky girl to fuck him?”

            “Shut up.”

            “You said not to be nice.”

            “Are you fucking...” Ian looked away from him and Mickey followed his gaze across the quad. Most people were looking at them, some whispering to each other. Several girls in the vicinity were bright red, others were looking over at Ian like he was a particularly nice cut of prime rib. Gretchen and Paxton were headed their way. “Thanks a lot.”

            Mickey shrugged, tried not to smart at the genuine hurt in Ian’s voice. Part of him knew he was about to get reamed for that. Ian would be mad at him and therefore not trust him. Gretchen would beat his ass until he couldn’t breathe anymore. He dropped his eyes as the two agents stopped on either side of Ian.

            “We should go,” Gretchen said.

            “Yeah,” Ian replied. He got to his feet, brushed off his jeans.

            Mickey looked up once they had taken several steps away to find Paxton still there, staring at him. “What?” Mickey snapped. “Can’t anyone take a fucking joke around here?”


	5. Chapter 5

Ian woke to the consistent beep of his alarm and Mickey’s annoyed groan. “Would you shut that the fuck off?” Mickey said.

            “Need to get up,” Ian grumbled. He reached blindly for his phone and the screen blinded him as it came to life. The alarm stopped, heavy silence descended on the room. After a long moment, a moment where his eyes closed and for just a second he pretended the whole world had stopped, he rolled out of bed and turned on the lamp between their beds.

            “What the fuck?” Mickey said. His voice had a high whine to it, like a puppy caught doing something bad. His eyes pinched closed, he pulled the covers up over his head.

            “We have class,” Ian said. He got to his feet, grabbed a towel and headed for the door.

            “In like... two hours.”

            “Need to take a shower, get dressed, have breakfast—”

            “I’m not made of fucking money.”

            “The school pays for water, not you,” Ian said. He stepped out into the hallway and closed the door on his roommate’s complaints. He was still half asleep, the world fuzzy around him as he stumbled down the hall. A couple of alarms went off in various rooms, heard in the hall as a constant bird call at dawn.

            Ian stepped into the bathroom and pulled the curtain on the shower. Dropping his boxers, he turned the knob all the way to hot and stepped into the steam. He could feel his muscles relaxing, his skin going red. His thoughts spun towards the day before, the disastrous orientation, and Mickey acting like most people in the world acted with his secrets. Not that he should have trusted a guy he just met with his secrets at all.

            He stepped out without washing much of anything. A towel wrapped around his waist, he went back to his room and flicked the overhead lights. Mickey’s groan filled the room followed by a couple of choice curse words Ian wasn’t even sure his Uncle Frank would have spewed. “Get up,” Ian said.

            “Go without me,” Mickey muttered.

            “You’re gonna skip your first class?” Ian glanced over to the bulge in the blankets and his heart softened. Somehow Mickey was small enough to fit on the twin bed even with his head a foot away from the headboard, his pillow crunched under black sheets. “Come on, man. You gotta go.”

            “Just bring me the notes.”

            “I’m not gonna fucking bring you notes. Get your ass outta bed.” Ian dropped his towel and grabbed a fresh pair of underwear. He turned and threw a pillow at Mickey.

            “You’re not my fucking boss,” Mickey snapped. He poked his head out from under the covers and his eyes went wide, quickly shot to the ceiling.

            Ian looked down, suddenly very aware he was naked. Coughing, he pulled up his underwear and then his jeans. He put on a shirt before he spoke to Mickey again. “It’s your fuckin’ life, man. I’m gonna go.”

            Mickey looked at him as he opened the door, blue eyes blank. “You gonna go get your security first?”

            Ian looked across the hall at the closed door. Shrugging, he said, “Let them sleep.”

            He had one foot out the door when Mickey said, “Hey, wait a minute. I’m coming.”

            Ian leaned against the wall in the hallway and waited. He listened to Mickey’s breath, his grumble of swears, as he scrambled to get ready in the space of a few minutes. Eyes on the agents’ door, Ian didn’t breathe thinking that they’d walk out any minute, ready to take him to class. He tapped his foot.

            Mickey appeared in the hallway, still a mess. He had a hoodie over his muscle shirt, the sleeves rolled up. With a yawn, he said, “Let’s fuckin’ go.”

            Ian started down the hall, let the early morning silence surround them. He still itched to move faster, but he could no longer tell if it was a need to get away from his security or because of Mickey’s face a few minutes ago when he’d been naked in front of him. Just remembering it made Ian’s whole body go hot and cold, thrown through mixed signals for endless seconds before he shut down his brain. He’d controlled his urges his entire life, played the political game. He could do it for three more years, until after his father’s second term was a lock. Three more years. His roommate being gay wasn’t going to change that.

            “When does this class even start?” Mickey asked as they stepped outside. “Isn’t it like half an hour from now?”

            Ian shrugged. “I wanna get there early.”

            Mickey snorted. “You’re fuckin’ crazy.”

            Ian bristled at the comment, but tried not to let it show. Annoyance beat out the flutter in his heart when Mickey’s arm brushed his. Yeah. Even his suppressed libido could handle errant glances from Mickey, an asshole who said all the wrong things. Ian rubbed a hand across his face, tried not to let Mickey’s fatigue turn into his own.

            They walked in silence to the classroom. At the door, Gretchen stood waiting, her hands behind her back. Ian stared at her and said, “How long have you been here?”

            “I checked the perimeter an hour before class,” she said.

            “And Pax?”

            She nodded behind him. Ian turned and, sure enough, Paxton walked through the door just behind them. Both looked at home in the college atmosphere, neither one too old to draw attention, but both too stiff not to. Ian sighed and headed into the classroom, Gretchen at his heels.

            There were three kids already there and none of them looked up at their entrance. Ian chose an empty row three from the front and sat down. Mickey sat on his right and Gretchen to his left, Paxton stopped at the door. Ian had the familiar feeling that he was boxed in, watched, and hated to say that it didn’t bother him at all.

            Mickey didn’t try to fill the silence with conversation, something Ian was grateful for. He really had no interest in hearing more comments about his life or his security or whatever the hell else Mickey wanted to make fun of him for. The guy was still trash enough to remind him of his family, but he was becoming more Frank and less Fiona by the minute, and just his breath was enough to set Ian on edge.

            More kids filtered into the classroom and a buzz started in the room. He heard his name several times, the click of cameras. Paxton had entered the room, his voice a strong steel asking people to put their phones away. Ian’s grip on his pen tightened.

            “Hey, take a fuckin’ breath, would you?” Mickey whispered. His blue eyes were calm. “You need a cigarette?”

            “Maybe five.”

            Mickey checked the clock. “Give it an hour and we’ll ditch.”

            Ian stared at him a moment, tried to reconcile Mickey’s easy empathy with his comments the other day. He came up with nothing, nodded, and looked back to the front of the room. He was already listing all the reasons college had been a terrible idea, lessened security or not. He probably could have convinced his dad to let him take classes online and then he could sit in his room in Connecticut for four years, no one to bother him.

            The professor walked into the room, took one glance at all the hubbub and landed his eyes on Ian. Ian stared back at him blankly and the professor scoffed, unimpressed. Ian couldn’t help but smile a little. That was at least an accurate reaction to his celebrity.

            A course syllabus was handed out and the professor talked about it. Ian made notes in the margin of his sheet, every once in a while glanced up at Mickey who was staring at the professor with a squint like he was trying to make him disappear. When an hour was up, Mickey said, “Wanna go?”

            “If I go the whole class will go.”

            “Someone thinks a lot of himself.” Ian shot him a look and Mickey shrugged. “Well, I’m fucking going.”

            Ian shook his head as his roommate slipped out of his seat and headed for the door. The professor only kept them twenty minutes more and Ian took a deep breath. Gretchen’s eyes were on him, silently waiting for the signal to leave. Ian got to his feet and followed her out the door, out of the building. When he turned to the left, a cigarette was suddenly in front of him.

            “Congrats,” Mickey said. “You survived your first lecture.”

            Ian put the cigarette between his teeth, let Mickey light it. His fingers brushed Ian’s lips, unsteady on the lighter, and Ian cupped his hands closer to get the light. Then he shook him off, took a long drag, and luckily didn’t cough. “Thanks.”


	6. Chapter 6

Mickey felt like he was stalking Ian. He had to be in the room when Ian was in the room, had to be in class with Ian when they had class together, and basically had to follow him anywhere else he decided to go. Easy if the guy liked him, but Ian remained pissed that Mickey had shared one of his secrets with the entire campus and didn’t invite Mickey anywhere with him. Which meant that Mickey had to follow Ian without Ian wanting him to follow him and without Ian knowing he had to follow him. So, yeah, he came off as a stalker.

            An opportunity to change that came up when he was on campus outside the library, pacing. Ian was inside with Paxton and they had agreed Mickey would walk him back to the dorm, give Ian a sense of freedom for five minutes.

            A girl walked up to Mickey with a bright orange flier and a highlighter smile. “Hey,” she said. “You wanna come to a party?”

            Mickey stared at her and her bubblegum attitude. He took the flier from her without a word, scanned over the black words. His first instinct was to reject it. Keeping Ian safe was the priority and a rowdy college party wasn’t the easiest place to do that.

            “Please?” she said. Her smile faltered slightly. “All the pledges have to get ten boys to come and I only have two and—”

            “Yeah,” Mickey said. He folded the flier and looked back up at the girl, offered her half a smile. His heart beat a little harder in his chest now, but a sorority party, sanctioned by the school, had to be a little safer than an underground rager. “Can I bring my roommate?”

            Her eyes lit up. “Yes! Of course. Thank you. I’m Emily. You need to say my name to get in.”

            Mickey nodded and she headed off. He stuffed the flier into the back pocket of his jeans and looked up just as Ian exited the library. “Hey,” he said and Ian gave him a thoroughly uninterested look. “You wanna grab lunch?”

            Ian grunted. “You don’t wanna get lunch with that chick?”

            “Nah,” Mickey said. “She looks clingy and I’m a once and done kinda guy.”

            Ian gave him a look, a smile teasing his lips. “Right.”

            Mickey glanced over Ian’s shoulder at Paxton and said, “We really need Men in Black here to go to the fucking cafeteria?”

            “All kinds of threats in the cafeteria,” Ian said. He looked back at Paxton who nodded at them and stepped back a few feet. Ian shook his head. “So what did that girl want?”

            Mickey glanced at Paxton again, lowered his voice. “You think you can ditch these guys?”

            “Why?”

            “Sorority party Friday,” Mickey said through his fingers. He held Ian’s gaze steady, saw interest spark. “Might be more fun if Bonnie & Clyde weren’t hanging around, you know?”

            “Bonnie & Clyde were criminals.”

            Mickey rolled his eyes. “Fuck off.”

            Ian looked over his shoulder at Paxton, waited a little too long before looking back. Mickey shook his head at Paxton, made sure he knew everything was okay before he burst in and tackled Mickey to the ground. “Sure,” Ian said. His eyes met Mickey’s again, a genuine smile starting on his lips. “We’re just gonna need an escape plan.”

            “No worries,” Mickey said. Pulling a pack of cigarettes from his pocket, he placed one between his teeth. “Our dorm room ain’t exactly high security.” Smoke rings left his lips and he offered the cigarette to Ian, who took it smoothly. He’d gotten better at smoking in only a few days, his body readjusting to the habit, long fingers still on the length of the cigarette, lips pursed around its length.

            “Promise me something?” Ian said, handing back the cigarette.

            “Anything.”

            “Don’t try to hook me up with some sorority girl.”

            Mickey smirked. “Not up for losing your virginity to a girl chewing bubblegum?” He nudged Ian in the ribs, harder than necessary, but got a smile out of him. “Come on, Emily was pretty fuckable. She might even do your homework for the rest of the semester if you play your cards right.”

            Ian snorted. “Let’s just get lunch, okay?”

***

            Gretchen stared down at the orange flier in her hands, her tongue poised in the middle of her upper lip. Paxton sat back against his bed and flung an orange rubber ball at the ceiling. White dandruff fell, coated his black shirt. The whole time Mickey bit the top of his thumb and flicked his eyes from one to the other.

            “I suppose,” Gretchen said. “We’d have to scout the building first, make sure we knew the exits and stay close to him... but if he really wants to go, I don’t see sorority girls posing any real threat.”

            “Have you seen Scream Queens?” Paxton said.

            Gretchen ignored him and handed the flier back to Mickey. “Fine. We’ll go.”

            Mickey let go of the breath he was holding, his fingers on the edge of the flier. “Thing is,” he said, “you kinda can’t go.”

            “Excuse me?”

            “I told Ian we’d ditch you, go to the party alone,” Mickey said. Gretchen opened her mouth, probably to yell, and Mickey continued quickly, “I went to see the house this afternoon. It’s small, two stories, got three exits. I can probably get inside sometime before to scout the place out and make sure everything’s secure.”

            “You want to protect him on your own in the middle of a rowdy party?” Gretchen asked.

            “It’s a bunch of sorority girls and five dollar wine coolers,” Mickey said. “You get some of my brothers down there and an AK-47 and I can still keep Ian safe.”

            “I don’t like it,” Paxton said. He caught the ball, rested it between his knees, and sat up. His brown eyes caught Mickey’s and, with an apologetic shrug, he added, “Too many variables.”

            “Not to mention you’re encouraging him to slip protective detail,” Gretchen said. “Do you have any idea how stupid that is?”

            Mickey resisted the urge to roll his eyes and settled back against the wall. “Look, I don’t think it’s a secret that I’m losing him. He doesn’t like me, he doesn’t want to be around me, and it’s creepy how much I run into him. If this operation’s gonna work, we need to be friends.”

            “Then get friendly. Don’t take him to parties without us.”

            “This is how you get in with kids like this,” Mickey said. “Rich kids like him, they like trash, they like it a lot. And the reason they like trash is because we can get them into places that they couldn’t have gotten in without us. They like a little danger, a little responsibility. And since I’m not taking him to a fucking crack house, maybe you two can calm down a bit on the protocol.” He paused to take a breath, met Paxton’s eyes instead of Gretchen’s. “It’s a bunch of fucking airhead blondes. You really think I can’t take them?”

            Paxton hesitated and looked over at Gretchen. The two of them had some sort of silent conversation, at the end of which Paxton said, “We’re going to set you up with an ear piece and those TV wristwatch things you can talk into. You call us if you need any help and you make sure Ian doesn’t leave his panic button behind, okay?”

            Mickey nodded.

            “We’re still gonna have to talk about you encouraging him slipping his detail,” Gretchen warned.

            Again, Mickey nodded. He walked out of their dorm room and into his own. Ian sat at his desk, bent over a large textbook of all of Shakespeare’s plays. Mickey’s stomach turned at the thought of having to read even one of them.

            “Hey,” Ian said. “Do you know what ‘gasted’ means?”

            “No idea.” Mickey flopped down on his bed.

            “Gotta guess?”

            “Fucked,” Mickey replied. He placed a cigarette in his mouth and chewed on the end of it, not quite ready to light it. “Don’t all Shakespearian words mean ‘fucked?’”

            “Didn’t Gretchen tell you to fix the smoke alarm?”

            Mickey blew out rings, followed them until they dashed their skulls on the ceiling. “Gast Gretchen.”


	7. Chapter 7

Ian’s eyes drooped in History. The professor had inexplicably decided that the second class was the best possible time to go through the entirety of countries under the British Empire during colonization. About ten countries in, Ian had realized he could Google the answer and started doodling pictures in the margin of his notebook.

            Behind him, several boys were whispering about him. He caught snippets of the conversation from the usual bullshit about him being a bastard to general comments against his father’s presidency. Nothing he disagreed with, but he kinda wished that people could find something better to talk about. Something wet hit the back of his head and he brushed off the spitball between his fingers.

            “You okay?” Paxton asked. He glanced over his shoulder at the boys, brown eyes ground dirt.

            “Fine,” Ian said. And then, when Paxton didn’t turn back around, “It’s fine. Let it go.”

            Paxton settled back into his seat and another spitball hit the back of Ian’s head. Bottom lip bitten, Ian pretended not to feel it, focussed on the professor’s droning lecture. Wet paper rolled down the back of his neck, under the collar of his shirt. He glanced at the clock. Twelve more minutes. He could last twelve more minutes with assholes shooting spitballs at him.

            Three more spitballs hit him in quick succession. “Hey,” Ian whispered and Paxton looked at him. “If I were to deck a kid, you think you could hold his friends back?”

            Paxton snorted. “If you asked Gretchen, she’d do it for you. And then we’d avoid the media scandal.”

            “Might as well ask Mickey to do it,” Ian said. “Sometimes he’s a better bodyguard than you are.”

            “He has the luxury of not being afraid to go to jail.”

            Ian smirked but it died quickly when another spitball hit him. He wiped the back of his neck, his fingers dotted with green paper. Flicking his fingers, he dropped all the balls to the ground, and rubbed them into the carpet with his heel. Nine more minutes. He’d done harder things in his life. He’d survived four separate political campaigns.

            “Seriously, if I were to fucking deck a guy—”

            “You want me to take care of it?”

            Ian pursed his lips. “No.”

            “Listen to the lecture.”

            “Are you my mom now?”

            “Your mom would tell you to fucking deck the kid.”

            Ian couldn’t find the heart to smile. Yeah, Monica would tell him to deck the kid. She might even do it herself. But Ian had grown up to be less like his mother, told to pull away from her in every way possible, so all that comment served to do was tell him all the reasons he couldn’t deck the guy. No matter how much he wanted to.

            Seven minutes.

            “Do me a favour?” Ian asked. “Turn around and shoot them.”

            Paxton smiled. “Thought you didn’t want me getting involved.”

            Ian closed his notebook, shifted in his seat. “Let’s go.”

            Paxton nodded and they got to their feet. One last spitball hit Ian in the arm. He brushed it off, annoyance bitter in his chest, and walked out the door with his backpack slung over one shoulder. Gretchen gave them a look as they walked out and said, “There’s still six minutes.”

            “You wanna listen to six more minutes of all of Britain’s colonies?” Ian asked. He offered her a weak smile. “Be my guest.”

            She reached forward and picked a green spitball off the back of his neck. Her fingers smoothed down his nape, gentle and motherly. Ian almost broke, so close to it already with a week of this bullshit behind him and four years of it in front of him. If there was anything he thought four campaigns had taught him, it was how to ignore personal attacks. But apparently slogans and commercials and the media calling him a bastard had less of an effect than three guys shooting spitballs.

            “Hey, bastard!” someone called.

            Ian hesitated, tripped over his next step. He looked over at Gretchen who shook her head almost imperceptively and he kept walking, ignored the voice behind him. Three more steps and something hit him from behind, something a lot harder than a spitball.

            Paxton shoved him to the ground, his weight on Ian’s back more painful than the hit. Tiny specks of gravel spattered to the concrete around him, pinprick wounds on the back of his neck, his heart in his throat. Paxton’s hand touched the back of his neck, his shoulders.

            “I’m fine,” Ian said. He pushed Paxton off and rolled onto his back, sorer from the fall than from a handful of gravel. Gretchen already had the three boys against the wall and was hissing at them, her voice a blur of unknown words. “You wanna go help her?”

            “Not unless she wants to arrest them.”

            With a sigh, Ian pushed himself up into a sitting position. The three guys stared back at Gretchen, wide-eyed, and he knew that with assholes like that, she had to be threatening all kinds of jail time, possible treason charges. “She doesn’t have to arrest them.” He touched his hand to the back of his neck, spots of blood appeared along his middle finger. “They didn’t do anything wrong.”

            “They threw gravel at you,” Paxton said.

            “Yeah, and if they did that to anyone else, no one would give a fuck.” Ian got to his feet and headed over to Gretchen. “Let them go.”

            She turned her fiery glare on him, then snapped, “Apologize.”

            All three boys tripped over themselves in their efforts to apologize and Ian waved them off. Gretchen dismissed them, grabbed Ian by the arm, and started away from the building in the opposite direction. “I can’t believe them. They think they can just throw gravel at the President’s son? I’m gonna tear them limb for limb, report them to the NSA.”

            “They’re just kids,” Ian said.

            “Kids who are about to be on a fucking watch list,” she snapped. “I’m going to run their names through a database, cross-reference it with any threats and—”

            “They’re not going to kidnap me and force my dad to go to war with Guam.” Ian rubbed the back of his neck again. “Don’t they have a right to be unhappy with their President?”

            “Not when they take it out on his son.”

            Ian let his side of the argument fall, half-listened as Gretchen went on about new security precautions, said she’d call her boss and go over a few things. She was on her phone by the time they were at Ian’s next class and she stopped at the door as she rattled off her security code. Paxton was on his phone too, texting. Ian had half an urge to rip it out of his hands, dash it to pieces against the nearest wall. Nothing had happened. Nothing was going to happen.

            Two more hours of class suffered through, Ian made it back to the dorm in one piece. He slammed his door in the agents’ faces, muffled their constant chatter on his security, and pressed his back against the door.

            “You okay, man?” Mickey asked.

            Ian opened his eyes, focussed on Mickey. One earphone hung loose over Mickey’s shoulder, the other in his ear. His laptop played a war movie, tanks exploding and people shouting, its sound clear from four feet away. Ian rubbed at his temples and said, “Yeah. Just peachy.”

            Mickey paused the movie. “Where’s the security?”

            “Arguing about my imminent assassination,” Ian said. “When’s the party again?”

            “Tomorrow,” Mickey replied. He licked his lips. “Maybe, uh, maybe we shouldn’t go though. You know, with whatever the hell’s going on with those kids and—”

            “It was a couple spitballs,” Ian said. He walked over to his bed and flopped down on it. “When that becomes lethal it’ll stop me from slipping my tail.”

            “I heard gravel.”

            “It’s nothing,” Ian insisted. He looked up at Mickey. “It’s already online?”

            Mickey blinked. “Yeah.”

            “Any terrorist groups claiming responsibility?”

            Mickey snorted, the edge of a smirk on his lips. “Not yet. But by tomorrow night, maybe.”

            Ian met Mickey’s eyes. The worry in their depths was real, sharp, and for a moment he felt bad about being so bitter towards the guy. “Look, Mick. I really need this party, okay? I need to get away from Gretchen and Pax and I need to do something fucking normal for once in my life and I can’t have three stupid guys who dislike my father ruin that for me. I need to get out of here.”

            A slight hesitation, then Mickey nodded. “Yeah. ‘Course.”

            “You gotta plan to get out of here yet?”

            Mickey smiled. “You ever climb out a window?”


	8. Chapter 8

The party had been a horrible idea. Mickey was ready to admit that before they’d even left the room. Ian had convinced him to wear a nice shirt, a black button down he’d had wadded up in the bottom of his sock drawer. He’d even thrown a belt his way, complained that Mickey couldn’t go out in a nice shirt with jeans hanging halfway off his butt. The crack he’d made about Ian staring at his ass hadn’t gone over well.

            Ian himself was dressed in a dark green sweater that framed his collarbones. He pulled the sleeves over his hands, across his fingers, and balled his hands up into fists. The crawl down the wall hadn’t gone too well, Ian slipping, Mickey cursing, and both of them falling a good three feet at the end of it to land in a tangled lump. Mickey had never seen a guy rise faster from a hit than Ian had.

            As they approached the party, Mickey noticed Ian slowed down and adjusted his pace to match. His eyes were on the crowds of kids heading for the house, some of them skipping, others in large groups. From across the street he spotted eight pre-drinkers and twelve people wasted on the front lawn. A girl framed in the doorway checked off names as people entered the building, but seemed to have no problem with what they brought through the door.

            Ian paused at the edge of the lawn and Mickey patted his back, picked a piece of grass from the back of his sweater. “Welcome to college,” Mickey said.

            Ian nodded, blank. For the first time, Mickey had a second to scan his expression, to notice the way Ian tensed and forced himself to relax with every breath. He squeezed Ian’s shoulder. “You all right?”

            “Sure,” Ian said. His smile fake, he met Mickey’s eyes. “Let’s go in.”

            “Hold up a second,” Mickey said. His fingers tightened and Ian winced, unused to the pressure. His feet slipped in the dewy grass, but Mickey held him steady. “What’s up? What’s wrong?” He did a quick scan of the perimeter, hopefully quick enough that Ian didn’t notice. “You worried about those assholes from yesterday?”

            “No,” Ian said. He shrugged as he met Mickey’s eyes. “Just... it’s weird not being watched for once.”

            Mickey nodded, clapped him on the back. “Nice to have a little freedom, huh?”

            “Just weird.”

            “Then let’s get you drunk,” Mickey said. He immediately regretted the words, but pushed Ian towards the house anyways. He caught the eyes of several people who gave Ian odd glances and glared at them until they looked away. The whispers followed them, people looking at them from every angle. When they reached the door, the blonde girl stared openly, her jaw dropped.

            “Hey,” Ian said. His smile was pure politics. “We were invited by... Emily?”

            “Emily,” the girl said. She looked down at her sheet and nodded. “Sure. Thanks.”

            Mickey felt her eyes on them as they walked through the narrow door. Inside, the party was in full swing. The floor was slippery with spilled alcohol, the air heavy with smoke. Some of it was cigarettes, some clove cigarettes, and a small bit of marijuana was mixed in. If he got the President’s son high, he could just go ahead and resign.

            He hovered on the awkward edge of wanting to excuse himself to find them something to drink and not wanting Ian out of his sight. A buzz in his ear told him the earpiece was alive and well, a small reprieve from the pounding music. He twirled the watch on his arm, wondered how Gretchen and Paxton could expect to hear anything over the noise of the place.

            Right away he noticed he’d been wrong about the building. From the outside, it had looked simple, but from the inside it was a winding maze of hallways and backrooms and closets. Bottles littered the floor, some still half full, and people crammed close together, dancing with their bodies touching. If anyone had a camera, anyone at all, the whole deal would be off, Ian a scandal on the front page of some trashy magazine, and Mickey fired.

            He found a lot of ways he could be fired in the first five minutes.

            The two of them weaved through the dance crowd and into the kitchen where drinks were being handed out. Mickey tried to push Ian towards something non-alcoholic and got ignored. Ian popped the top on a beer and chugged, much to the appreciation of the people crowded around the island. Mickey watched him drink, his Adam’s apple a bulge in his throat, and calculated all the ways this could go badly. Already there were cameras out.

            A terrible, horrible idea.

            Then Gretchen was in his ear, asking him how it was going. He managed to mutter that it was okay without anyone seeing him and kept his eyes on Ian as the gentle giant chatted with a girl he’d never seen before. Quite honestly though, he hoped that was the girl Ian decided to spend all his time with that night. She was five foot nothing, long wispy blonde hair, and Mickey had no doubt that Ian himself could take her if she tried anything. Not that she was likely to try anything other than getting her hands down his pants.

            Mickey stayed on the outskirts of the party, kept conversation to a minimum. One girl had the gull to tell him that the President’s son was straight after she spent ten minutes hitting on him and he kept his eyes on Ian. A smile appeared on Mickey’s lips at that, involuntary, and she sped off in a huff.

            It was hard not to notice how good Ian looked. The green of his sweater brought out his eyes and his jeans were tight on his legs. Everything about him was strong, tall, and capable. Picturing him as a virgin was a hell of a lot harder than picturing him pinning Mickey to a wall, in control of the situation.

            Mickey banished the thought as he saw Ian pick up another beer. He stepped away from the wall, leaned in close to Ian. “Hey, man,” he said. He backed off as Ian turned to look at him. “You sure you’re good?”

            Ian popped the top. “Fine.” He took a long sip.

            Mickey watched him, steady with the bottle in his hand, still on his feet. Four beers in and he seemed no worse for wear. Leave it to the Irish to have nerves of steel. “Yeah,” Mickey said. “But maybe if you need a fix, light a cigarette or something?”

            Ian gave him a look. “Weren’t you the one lamenting my freedom earlier?”

            “Excuse me for being worried about your reputation,” Mickey said. He met Ian’s eyes, tried not to shiver at the disparaging look in them. “Whatever, man. I’m not carrying your drunk ass home.”

            Shrugging, Ian walked away and got pulled onto the dance floor by none other than Emily herself. Ian twirled her with one hand, sipped his beer with the other. Mickey leaned up against a wall again, his eyes bleary, and checked in with Gretchen. She said something every ten minutes or so and Mickey replied every thirty. He could feel her annoyance, but couldn’t be bothered to care. Last time he’d been at a party like this, he’d been shitfaced and high as fuck, so sober and leaning against the wall wasn’t going well for him without Gretchen bitching in his ear. He rubbed at the uneven patches of skin on his fingers, felt for the letters that were no longer there.

            Ian had two more beers. Mickey lost him in the crowd for a grand total of fifteen minutes before he found him on the dance floor, arms hung around two girls. Smirking, Mickey watched the three of them jump up and down to the music. When the song ended, Ian headed to the kitchen for yet another beer and Mickey’s smirk turned into a frown. He caught Ian’s arm again and said, “Maybe you should slow down a bit?”

            Ian burped, a grin wide enough to bite off Mickey’s head crossing his lips. “You want this one?”

            “No.”

            “Then fuck off.”

            Mickey tightened his grip on Ian’s elbow and the redhead stumbled when he tried to step away. Mickey met his eyes, tight, in control. “I’m not carrying you home.”

            “Fuck off.” Ian ripped his arm from Mickey’s grip and rejoined his girls on the dance floor. For a moment, Mickey considered how much trouble he’d be in if the President’s son ended up having a threesome in a sorority. Probably less trouble than he’d be in if the President had a daughter.

            It was an hour later that Mickey finally had something to worry about. Ian stumbled on the dance floor, his beer fell from his hand, and glass shattered everywhere. Several girls screamed. Blood dripped from one girl’s foot and a big guy, football player most likely, advanced on Ian.

            Mickey moved to step between them, pushed Ian back. The redhead stumbled behind him and Mickey ended up with one hand tied up in Ian’s t-shirt, desperate to keep him upright. “Hey, buddy, lighten up,” Mickey said. He met the eyes of the football player. “This is the President’s son. You really want to spend the rest of your life in jail?”

            The guy backed down and Mickey turned towards Ian, his grip softening. Ian stumbled in his grasp, his eyes not quite meeting Mickey’s. With a sigh, Mickey pushed Ian towards an empty hallway, steadied him with a hand on his arm.

            “Mick,” Ian said.

            “We’re going,” Mickey said. He scooted them around a couple making out against a wall and glanced behind him, wondered if the football player had the balls to follow them. His mind was racing around the different exits and how to get to one of them from the hallway. “And you can’t change my mind.”

            “I think I’m gonna vomit.”

            Mickey swallowed a sigh and settled Ian against a wall. In his ear, Gretchen asked him to check in again, but there was no way to do it discretely in the empty hallway, even with Ian as far gone as he was. “Just take a breath,” Mickey said. “We’ll find a bathroom.”

            Mickey looked both ways down the hall. It was empty, the sounds of the party far away but the music still close to deafening. As Mickey tried to remember the layout of the building, his multiple escape plans, he listened to Ian’s breath settle.

            “Hey,” Ian said after a minute. Mickey looked up into smiling green eyes. “You protected me.”

            “Yeah, well,” Mickey said. “Didn’t want Gretchen giving me shit for your black eye.”

            “But you saved me,” Ian said. His voice was drunken smooth, only slurred around the edges. He reached forward and tied his fingers up in Mickey’s shirt collar, pulled at him. “He woulda messed me up.”

            Mickey tripped forward, struck by Ian’s strength. “Again. Just saving my ass.” Ian’s fingers fell from his collar, tickled down his chest. Mickey took a step back, perhaps too quickly. “Let’s go, okay?”

            “Let’s not,” Ian said. Two quick steps forward and he had Mickey against the other wall of the hall. Ian’s breath was hot on Mickey’s face, long fingers curling through the strands of hair at the back of his neck.

            “Ian,” Mickey said. He was on high alert now, higher alert than he’d been on with the football player. Flattening himself to the wall, he looked up into blurry green eyes and asked calmly, “What the fuck are you doing?”

            Ian didn’t reply. Instead, he lowered his lips to Mickey’s and kissed him. No time to speed up, no pause for acceptance, just a rough kiss placed against Mickey’s lips. Ian’s body pressed into his, pushed him into the wall, and Mickey couldn’t help but think this was some sort of ungodly karma thrown at him for thinking about this earlier. He tried to breathe with Ian’s lips crammed against his, tongue desperate at his lips, begging for entrance.

            At his thigh, he could feel Ian hard against him. Ian played with the friction of their jeans. His hips circled into Mickey’s, hard and delicious. Mickey moaned at the movement, unable to help his body’s response, and Ian’s tongue dipped into his mouth, hot with alcohol. Mickey helped him out, licked into his mouth, bucked his hips hard against Ian’s until Ian’s hands came down roughly against his hips, kept him in place.

            Ian’s lips moved off of Mickey’s and across his jaw. Still it took Mickey a moment to remember how to breathe, his eyes glued shut, moans rumbling through him from every prick of Ian’s lips against his skin. Hands slid down the length of his body and across the smooth fabric of his shirt, fingers rough and bruising. Ian nibbled at the crook of Mickey’s neck and even as hot pleasure rolled through Mickey, he swallowed his groan in desperation.

            A drunk guy was on top of him. Forget the fact that it was the President’s son, forget being an agent, forget the fact that he was _so fucking fired._ There was a drunk man pinning him to a wall. That he could deal with. Of course, he could deal with it violently and punching the President’s son wasn’t really an option, so maybe he did have to keep that in mind.

            Ian’s lips, wet and sucking, wobbled across his collarbone and Mickey breathed out a curse that made teeth imprint a smile into his skin. Hands dipped low down his hips, fingers pressed for a moment against the outer edges of his ass, and then one hand dipped low across his crotch. Several more swears flooded Mickey’s mind, his head back and hitting the wall behind him as Ian palmed him through his jeans.

            “Ian,” Mickey managed, his voice strained. Ian shut him up with a kiss, hot and heavy and rough. Mickey tasted blood on his lips, pure adrenaline, and beer.

            Beer.

            He had to remember the beer.

            Mickey pressed his hands to Ian’s chest and felt the murmur of pleasure on his lips. For a moment, Mickey hesitated. He was hard in Ian’s hand, skilled fingers moving through the denim of his jeans, and in the morning they could both blame it on all the alcohol. No harm, no foul. And for a virgin, Ian was a damn good kisser.

            Gretchen’s voice and another shot of spiked saliva pulled him back to reality. Mickey’s fingers curled around Ian’s t-shirt and he pushed him back, hard. Ian stumbled into the wall across the hall as Mickey wiped his lips, took a breath. The moment he took to steady himself was enough for Ian’s aggression to become lazy, his hands reaching out across the hall, welcoming Mickey back into his embrace.

            “We need to go home,” Mickey said, his voice shaking slightly.

            “Isn’t it more fun to do it here?”

            “We’re not doing this fucking anywhere.”

            “Mick...”

            Mickey took a deep breath and refused to close his eyes. He knew if he gave Ian even a split second of vulnerability the jig would be up, the redhead would be on him again, and even Gretchen’s annoyance wouldn’t be enough to stop him. So Mickey settled on the only argument that Ian was likely to take at face value. “You’re drunk,” Mickey said. “And I don’t... I’m not gonna sleep with you when your shitfaced, okay?”

            Ian chewed his bottom lip. Mickey tried not to stare, tried not to think about those spots of blood on his tongue, soft lips pressed together. He couldn’t close his eyes though, couldn’t take a breath. He needed Ian to back down before he could take another second to himself. Even the space of the hallway, a good four feet across, wasn’t enough to make Mickey feel untouched.

            “I’m not that drunk.”

            Mickey tried not to laugh. “You’re pretty fucking drunk.”

            Ian’s eyes fell to the floor and Mickey took the moment to take a deep breath. Think about baseball, the bubblegum squad in the other room, thank his lucky stars that no one had stumbled into the hallway and taken a picture of them like that. When he was sure he had himself under control and also pretty sure Ian had fallen asleep against the wall, he raised his wrist to his lips and whispered, “Gonna need some help. East side.”

            Mickey stepped forward and looped his arm around Ian’s shoulders. The taller man leaned into him, heavy with the weight of his drunkeness, and Mickey dragged him through the back hallways of the building until he hit a door to the outside.

            Paxton stood on the porch and took Ian from him without a word. Mickey leaned back against the French doors, watched them walk away.

            “Drunk?” Gretchen asked, an edge to her voice.

            Mickey gave her a look, shrugged. “You try to keep the Irish away from liquor.”


	9. Chapter 9

Ian thought he must be inside a nightmare. With his eyes closed to the world, even the backs of his own eyelids too bright, he couldn’t possibly be awake. He pried open one eye, groaned as the sun made contact. Rolling over in bed, he opened his eyes to the other side of the room, still too bright, and stared at the edge of Mickey’s bed.

            “There’s Aspirin on the table,” Mickey said. Ian heard him flip a page, loud as a gunshot.

            He groped blindly at the table and his hand came down on a bottle. Twisting the top, he poured two pills into his hand and swallowed them dry before snuggling further into the covers. His skull was alive with a brass section that size of Russia and he felt like he’d gained sonar hearing over night, every sound of Mickey’s from the flipping of pages to the rustling of his sheets to the soft swallow of his breath loud enough to make him want to kill himself.

            “What time is it?” Ian mumbled.

            “Two.”

            “In the afternoon?”

            “Yeah. Pax came by and poked you with a stick about an hour ago to make sure you were alive,” Mickey said. His voice was soft, barely a whisper, and Ian felt a rush of affection for his roommate. “The Aspirin’s from Gretchen. She came by about three hours ago, before she thought you died.”

            Ian blinked under the covers, his eyelashes rubbed against cotton. His stomach rolled, close to nausea, and he said, “They know?”

            “I told you I wasn’t gonna carry you home.”

            In one quick motion, Ian sat up, blinking in the blinding light. He held his groan in his throat and forced himself to swallow it. Glancing over at Mickey, he watched the other guy flip the pages of his textbook absently, a highlighter rested on his bottom lip. “How are you all right?” Ian asked.

            “I don’t have the hangover recovery rate of a fourteen year old girl.”

            Ian huffed. “That the next thing you’re gonna yell to the entire school?”

            Mickey looked over at him, blue eyes sparkling, his smile mischievous. Ian’s heart skipped a beat. “If you piss me off.”

            Ian got to his feet. He stretched out his back, all his muscles cracking, the feeling echoing through his skull. With a deep breath, he rubbed his head and looked back at Mickey. “Why are you reading _King Lear_ right now?”

            “Because it’s two in the afternoon,” Mickey said. He looked up at Ian, eyes weighted with concern. “You should go take a shower or something. You smell like you poured a liquor store over your head.”

            “Fuck off,” Ian grumbled. He shuffled to his dresser, grabbed a fresh pair of underwear and a towel. Then he turned towards the door and bothered to look at Mickey head on for the first time since he’d woken up. With a low whistle, he said, “Someone got lucky last night.”

            “Huh?”

            Ian gestured at the marks on Mickey’s neck; wet purple circles dotted the line of his pulse. Small bites pricked his skin, red and angry. Ian let out a small laugh and said, “Seriously. Who the fuck did that to you?”

            Mickey stared at him, blue eyes crystal. His mouth was open, but failed to form words.

            Ian felt awkwardness enter the room and he closed his lips around his smile. Shrugging, he said, “Whoever it was, hope it was worth the beating you got from Gretchen for leaving me alone to hook up with someone.”

            “Yeah,” Mickey said, his voice too slow, his eyes a little too wide. He licked his bottom lip and his teeth scraped against pale pink skin. “Sure.”

            Ian paused, wringed his towel in his hands. He knew it was none of his business, but Mickey had gotten him out from under the watchful eye of the Secret Service last night. And he had called them when Ian got too drunk, probably tucked him into bed, wrinkled clothes and all. He’d stayed silent for most of the day, waiting for Ian to wake up, so Ian thought he at least owed it to the guy to ask. “You all right?”

            “Fine.” But Mickey didn’t look up from the play.

            “You sure?”

            Mickey shrugged. “Peachy.”

            Ian’s heart, suddenly still in his chest, prevented him from stepping away. The conversation made his headache worse, made it pound in his ears, but he knew he was missing something. Mickey didn’t look like this usually. Mickey wasn’t this nice usually. Granted, he’d known the guy for a week, and he looked like he’d had his fair share of hangovers, so maybe he was just being polite, but Ian couldn’t shake the sinking sensation that something was wrong.

            “You really call Gretchen last night ‘cause I was drunk?”

            “Yeah.”

            “Nothing else happened?”

            Mickey met his eyes, steady. “Nothing happened. You were drunk, I can’t carry your giant ass, so I pressed that fancy little button you got in your pocket and they came running. Perks of power, I guess.”

            “How drunk?” Ian asked.

            “You remember anything?”

            “Not really.”

            “Then pretty damn drunk.”

            Ian found his heart again in his shoes. He reeled back to the White House Christmas party and the champagne in his hand. “Mickey,” he said, his voice soft. Mickey looked up at him, suddenly worried. “How drunk?”

            Mickey bit his bottom lip. “What do you remember?”

            Ian shook his head. “I dunno. We showed up, I got a beer, there were... girls. Girls everywhere hitting on me and, uhh... I drank some more beers, I was dancing...”

            Mickey nodded. “Remember why you stopped dancing?”

            “Uhh... I broke a glass or something. Some girl’s boyfriend was mad at me and you... you stood up for me,” Ian said. He smiled at the blurry memory, tiny Mickey in front of him ready to take on a six-foot-eight football star. “Thanks.”

            “Don’t worry about it.”

            “Then, I guess, you called for help,” Ian finished. Mickey nodded and his eyes dropped back onto the book. Ian watched him, watched how calmly he sat there, reading. His whole posture unnerved Ian, too perfect, too in place, too adamant that nothing had happened. Something had to have happened. “How long did it take them to get there?”

            “Not long.”

            “How not long?”

            Mickey sighed. “I dunno, Ian. Do I look like I gotta fucking timer on me?”

            “You’re not telling me something.”

            Closing his eyes, Mickey made an unkind noise and closed the play around his fingertips. He made no move to open his eyes or say anything else.

            “What could possibly be so bad you don’t even wanna tell me?” Ian said. “You want Pax and Gretchen to go over it with me? I can just cross the hall right now and ask them—”

            “They don’t know,” Mickey snapped. His eyes measured the distance between Ian and the door, his hand pressed against his lips.

            Ian paused to stare at him, raised one eyebrow in a challenge. “Why not?”

            “Because I don’t know...” Mickey trailed off. Shrugging, he threw the book onto the floor and said, “I don’t know if they know.”

            Confused, Ian said, “Do they know or don’t they?”

            “They don’t know what happened, but I’m not gonna tell them because I don’t know what they know or what the clearance level is on this or anything, Ian,” Mickey said. His blue eyes were watery white, imploring Ian to shut up or give up or understand him. Ian scanned his face, the earnest expression. His eyes dipped to the marks along Mickey’s neck, the hard press of lips against that skin, and a flash of a memory came back to him. A dark hallway, his hands on someone solid, and someone pushing him away.

            “Shit.”

            “Hey, man—”

            “Shit,” Ian repeated. He ran his hands through his hair, unable to make his lips close. He had an odd sensation where he was sure, dead sure, that his heart had stopped beating, but he could feel it in his ears, in his feet, across every cell of his skin. Bile reared in his throat but he forced himself to swallow it. “Shit.”

            “Ian,” Mickey said, his voice hard on the word. “It’s okay. Everything’s—”

            “Nothing’s fucking okay, Mick!” Ian exclaimed. He managed to refocus his eyes on the other boy, looked at the dark marks again. He had done that. He had been on top of his roommate long enough to suck dark marks into his skin, bite at him. “Fuck.”

            Mickey got to his feet but kept his distance. “Should I... do I need to get Gretchen? Or call a fucking ambulance?”

            “No,” Ian said. He forced himself to breathe. He knew he must look crazy, deranged. A deep breath and he managed to blink for the first time since he’d realized what Mickey was trying to tell him. Pursing his lips tight, he met his roommate’s eyes again and said, “You can’t... Mick, you can’t tell anyone.”

            “I won’t.”

            “I mean, you really can’t tell anyone,” Ian said. His foot hovered off the ground, ready to step closer to him, but he thought better of it. God knows what Mickey thought of him now that he’d attacked him in the middle of a sorority party. “No one knows.”

            Mickey nodded, eyes wide. “Hey, it’s fine. I wouldn’t... you don’t get deeper in the closet than I am, okay? I won’t tell anyone.”

            “I’m sorry.”

            Mickey shrugged. “No worries. Just try not to do it again?”

            Ian snorted, the edge of a smile on his lips. “Don’t get me drunk again.”

            “You’re a horny fucking drunk,” Mickey agreed, smiling. He flopped back down on his bed and his smile faded. After a moment, he cleared his throat and said, “When you say... no one knows, what do you mean by that?”

            “I mean no one knows.”

            “Absolutely no one? Like... your dad doesn’t know?”

            Ian relaxed slightly and shook his head. “My dad knows. His Chief of Staff. All of the communications staff in the White House... his personal aide... Basically anyone who needs to know in case a scandal breaks.”

            Mickey nodded. “So Pax and Gretchen?”

            Ian shook his head and Mickey’s eyes fell to the floor. He stood there for an awkward moment more, then said, “I’m gonna go take a shower now. Umm... I really am sorry about your neck and... everything.”

            “No problem.”


	10. Chapter 10

Only a week of active assignment and Mickey was headed back to the Oval Office for the second time in his career. Getting there had been no easy task. Somehow he’d had to convince Gretchen he’d needed to see the President without telling her why he needed to see the President. Someone had to convince Ian to leave the dorm so that Mickey could change into a suit and head out in a Presidential car without raising questions. And time needed to be carved out of the President’s schedule so he could meet with his son’s bodyguard.

            All in all, not a great day for Mickey. Between spending five hours waiting for Ian to wake up, unsure what he was expecting, and then three more trying to get to the President, he was wiped. He’d slept for the hour it took to drive back to the White House and now stood trying not to yawn outside the Oval Office.

            “Mr. Milkovich?”

            Mickey looked up to see the President’s aide holding open the door for him. With a nod, he stepped into the Oval Office. The President sat behind his desk, a blue folder in his hand. When the door closed, he closed the file and looked up.

            “Mr. Milkovich,” the President said. “You’ll need to make this fast. I only have a few minutes.”

            “Of course, sir,” Mickey said. Then he ran out of words to say. He stared into green eyes identical to Ian’s but harder, older. Nausea rolled in his stomach and he resisted the urge to bring his hand to his neck, to call attention to the marks there just barely covered by the collar of his shirt.

            “Well?”

             “Right, sir, I’m not sure there’s a delicate way to put this,” Mickey said. He pursed his lips, looked for the right angle. Better to be on offense, than defense, he supposed. “But may I ask why you didn’t tell me your son’s gay?”

            The President’s eyes went wide. Before Mickey had only had the edge of his attention, the focus of his eyes but not his mind. Now the full force of the President’s consciousness looked at him, zeroed in on him, like he was a threat. Mickey wished he could’ve said he’d been the least bit intimidated, but there was little the President could do other than fire him, and doing so now would be weird at best, a dead giveaway at worst.

            “Excuse me?”

            “I asked you if there was anything I needed to know about your son to do my job properly,” Mickey said, calm. “And you neglected to tell me that he’s gay.”

            The President narrowed his eyes. “I fail to see what that has to do with your job.”

            “He’s a kid at college. What do you think he’s spending his time doing?” Mickey asked. “I can tell you. It’s drinking, drugs, and sex. Now I can handle the drinking, I’ve dealt with worse than your lightweight son before, and I can keep him away from the drugs, but sex? Sir, I need to know who the hell he’s going for to be able to do anything about that.”

            “My son knows what he can and can’t do,” the President said, his voice measured. There was a flash of fatigue in his eyes and his lips settled into something resembling a smile. “Don’t get me wrong. There’s nothing... I support him. But the White House, the press...”

            “I understand,” Mickey said. His eyes flickered to the window as the agents outside changed shifts. Their slow motions, the way none of them looked at each other, the ease in their movements, memorized steps. “But, sir, with all due respect, that was something I needed to know.”

            “What happened?”

            “Nothing happened, sir.”

            The President gave him a look, the kind of look that was so normal, so natural, Mickey almost forgot he was in the Oval Office. He could see his sister giving him that look. The jut of the chin, the hooded eyes, a little hint of _come on._ “You wouldn’t be here if nothing happened.”

            “I took care of it,” Mickey said. “But if I hadn’t... Look, I don’t know what would’ve happened at that party had things gotten out of hand. I had everything under control but Ian can’t hold his liquor. And if I’d known to keep him away from guys, if I knew I should’ve been more worried about him being pulled out by some asshole in a football jersey than by some little blonde girl, I could’ve done my job better.”

            “How do you figure?”

            “I don’t have to worry about girls, sir,” Mickey said. “If Ian fucks some chick and she runs off and tells someone, the scandal’s pretty minimal. If Ian goes into a room alone with some five-foot-nothing girl, what do I care? I gotta believe he can handle himself if she’s secretly a Russian spy or just plain bat shit crazy. But if he’s alone in a room with a guy the same size as him? A little bigger? A little smaller? I don’t know what kind of strength I’m lookin’ at, I don’t know how well trained your son is, and frankly, there’s nothing I can do about that kind of scandal.”

            The President nodded, a slight smile on his face. “Did you simply come down here to lecture me, Mr. Milkovich? Because I’ll have you know that I have a whole staff to tell me things I’ve done wrong.”

            For the first time since Mickey’d asked for the meeting, he wondered what he had actually wanted to get out of it. Pure panic had driven him to the White House, into the office of the President. What the hell did he know about dealing with a nineteen year old who wanted to get drunk but couldn’t get drunk or he’d get horny? How was he supposed to do his job without any backup in the moments he needed it most? But none of that was something he could say to the President. He was scared shitless, unable to do his job, and he couldn’t say that to his boss. So he settled on the next best thing.

            “I need to know if there’s anything else you haven’t told me,” Mickey said. “Anything else that’s been hidden from the public that I might need to know in order to do my job properly.”

            There was a long pause and then the President nodded. He gestured for Mickey to take a seat, then sat himself, folding into an armchair with the ease of a Persian cat. Southside roots or not, he fit into the life of luxury in a way that Mickey just couldn’t see Ian doing.

            “I suppose,” the President began, “that you know something about his mother?”

            “Lucy or Monica?”

            “Monica.” The President smoothed the line of his pants, eyes dropped to the floor and the spot on his shoe. Mickey looked towards the window, made sure the reflection was natural, not made by the edge of a gun or anything else sinister. “You know that during the campaign there were many questions about her and her health and—”

            “She tried to kill herself,” Mickey said. He didn’t have time for the President to beat around the bush and he knew the President didn’t have time for the run around either. “There was a big show of getting her help. Lucy by her bedside, the two of you supporting her together. I remember.”

            The President nodded, lost in thought. “She wasn’t just depressed or crying out for attention. She has bipolar disorder.”

            Mickey blinked. The words meant little to him, but he made a mental note to do some research on the topic. “And you’re saying it’s genetic?”

            Another nod and then quiet. The quiet of the Oval Office, never quite tempered, all the feet walking by a gong show outside. Mickey listened for every sound, noted every beat out of place, even as he made a list of all the things he had to do with this new information. Check the symptoms, keep an eye on Ian, and try not to seem like he knew too much. And he still had to deal with Ian being a horny drunk.

            “All right,” Mickey said. He rose to his feet. “Thank you, Mr. President.”


	11. Chapter 11

Ian spent the weekend studying and trying to avoid staring at the livid bruises on Mickey’s neck. He berated himself for getting out of control, for kissing his roommate, for almost giving away his biggest secret because he’d been _drunk_.

            He shouldn’t have been surprised. It wasn’t like he hadn’t done it before, hadn’t gotten wasted and kissed someone he wasn’t supposed to. He still had too vivid memories of his lips pressed against Charlie’s, his dad’s assistant frozen, his mind probably somewhere between I-need-to-leave-right-now and what-happens-if-I-reject-my-bosses-son?

            Ian did his best to dive into Shakespeare instead of ruminating on his multiple failures and his inability to keep it in his pants when drunk. But despite everything, despite more than a hundred pages of _King Lear_ to get through, his mind kept wandering to the sorority party. He’d had fun. He’d been a normal kid for a couple hours, drunk off his ass, no cares in the world, no security on his back. And that high, more than the alcohol, was what he craved as he flipped page after page.

            He broached the topic with Mickey late Sunday night when the dorm was quiet, all the parties having died down the night before classes started up again. Ian still had a reading report to write, five hundred words, but he could do it in the morning if he got up early enough. He was sitting on his bed, pulling off his socks, and watching Mickey chew on the end of a cigarette. Ian cleared his throat and said, “You know, I had fun Friday night.”

            Mickey gave him a look, raised an eyebrow.

            “Not like that,” Ian said, quick to backpedal. He felt the blush rising on his cheeks, wished he’d thought more about what he was going to say. “I don’t even remember... I mean... look, can we pretend that didn’t happen?”

            Mickey shrugged, lit the cigarette. The flame lit the contours of his face perfectly for half a second before he blew out a ring of smoke. “Fine by me,” he said. His unnerving blue eyes held Ian’s, expression a blank canvas waiting to be painted by Ian’s next words.

            Ian took a breath. “The party. It was fun to be away from it all, to be a normal college kid and... I wanna do it again.”

            “You’re kidding,” Mickey said.

            “No, it was—”

            “A fucking disaster.” Mickey swung on the bed so that he sat facing Ian, barely any space between their knees. Ian tried to be less aware of their proximity, but failed when there was a buzzing sensation between their cotton-clad knees. His eyes kept dipping from Mickey’s face to the hickeys to the bite marks. Even drunk he had an aesthetic aim and the bruises accented the natural curves to Mickey’s neck, played lovingly across his collarbone. Mickey snapped in his face and got his attention back. “If I hadn’t stepped in when I did, you would’ve been a fucking pancake on the floor.”

            “I won’t get drunk,” Ian said. “I just want to go to parties.”

            “No beer?”

            “Maybe one or two, but not overkill. I know my family history.”

            Mickey let out a breath, rubbed a hand across his mouth. “I’m not worried about you bein’ an alcoholic, okay? I’m worried about the girls that hang off you like tinsel and their six foot boyfriends.”

            “You can’t take ‘em?” Ian smirked.

            Mickey rolled his eyes. “’Course I can take some pretty boy but I don’t wanna be watchin’ you the entire time I’m at a party, and I gotta with the way you act, with what’s on your shoulders. I wanna live my own life.”

            “Oh,” Ian said. He felt his face fall, worked hard to rearrange it into a smile before he looked up at Mickey. “That’s okay. Whatever. I guess it’s probably not fun going out with the President’s son.” He swallowed hard and looked around the room. His eyes caught on a Guns & Roses poster on Mickey’s side of the room, blood splattered on a black background. Steadying himself, he said, “Could you at least get me outta here? You don’t have to come or take care of me or anything, just sneak me out.”

            Mickey snorted. He blew smoke into Ian’s face and Ian blinked, tried to stop his eyes from stinging. Shaking his head, the edge of a laugh in his voice, Mickey said, “You want me to let you out of here alone? I’m in big enough shit with your security detail for letting you get slammed on Friday. You think they won’t kill me for letting you out alone?”

            Ian groaned and fell back on his bed. He spoke to the ceiling. “I’m not concerned about them so I don’t see why you should be.”

            “Look at it this way,” Mickey said. His voice sounded further away now and, if Ian was honest with himself, it was a nice voice to listen to. Not too deep but roughed by cigarettes, every word sounded like honey edged with sandpaper. “You piss ‘em off too much or I do, and you’re no longer a free man.”

            “Give me a cigarette,” Ian said. He sat up and Mickey held out his own. Ian placed it between his lips, breathed in acrid smoke. Hints of Mickey’s saliva played on the end and Ian rolled the paper on his tongue, tasted Mickey – dirty and rough and alcoholic. He wondered if Mickey had hooch somewhere or if he just naturally tasted a little sharp. Ian pulled out the cigarette, held it back out to Mickey, said, “I need more than this room. Don’t get me wrong, this room is a godsend, but I need a life like a normal kid and I need parties and I need a couple drinks at the end of the week and, come on, you can’t begrudge me that.”

            Mickey stared at him for a long moment before he put the cigarette back between his teeth. “You ever wonder what life would’ve been like if Monica had left you with Frank?”

            Ian laughed, bitter and short. “All the time.”

            “Think that’d be better or worse?”

            Ian shrugged. “I always felt more at home there when we started to do holidays because campaigns wanted us to have family values or whatever. My half-siblings are my life and that neighbourhood... it feels like a real home, not a political stand-off waiting to happen.”

            Mickey snorted and blew another round of smoke into Ian’s face. “You got one big fantasy of the Southside in your head, don’t you?”

            “I know things are hard but—”

            “Nah, you don’t,” Mickey said. “You’re just a spoiled little rich kid like the rest of ‘em. You don’t want your sheltered life so you romanticize the poor, but you’ve got no idea what it’s like to sell coke for food and sleep with a handgun under your pillow. You’ve never woken in the middle of the night because your dad’s come home drunk and your little sister’s screamin’ at him to stay away, got a baseball bat and everything and he’s still comin’ at her. You’ve never had a prostitute forced on you to show your dad your straight and you’ve never been beaten within an inch of your life because you called the cops the night your mom died. So you don’t get to tell me that the Southside feels like a real home when you’ve never had to deal with it.”

            Ian stared at Mickey and flinched when the cigarette was shoved back into his hand. Mickey rolled onto his back, head on his pillow, and closed his eyes tight. Ian said, “All that stuff really happen to you?”

            “Fuck off.”

            Ian sucked in smoke and then let it out with a cough. He watched his roommate shift over the covers, searched for a question that might not be rejected. Finally he settled on, “How’d you get out?”

            “Scholarship,” Mickey said. “Some bullshit about putting inner-city kids in better places for better lives.”

            “You miss it?”

            “Miss my sister,” Mickey said. “But she got out a long time ago.”

            “Where is she?”

            “Chicago still. She works in a hotel in the city, manages now.”

            “I’m sorry,” Ian said.

            There was a long silence and he thought he’d finally pissed Mickey off too much. He put out the cigarette on the bedside table and rolled under the covers, tucked himself in up to the chin. Then he flicked off the lamp between them, let the room descend into darkness.

            “I’ll take you to another party,” Mickey said.

            Ian smiled and closed his eyes.


	12. Chapter 12

“You and Ian seem to be doing well,” Gretchen said. Her eyes were on Ian where he sat between stacks of library books. Mickey stood on the blindside, not in the view of the target and trusted her to give him the info if he came their way. Her eyes worked down the side of his neck, paused on the fading bruises, but she said nothing. She’d said nothing about them all week and Mickey doubted she’d start in on him now. “Anything change?”

            Mickey shrugged. “I’m trash and he likes trash.”

            “Pax says you’re trying for another party on Friday?”

            Mickey swore and Gretchen raised an eyebrow at him. He gave her a hard look back and said, “What the fuck? You guys bugging me now?”

            “You’re not as good with secrets as you think you are.”

            “Well, do me a favour and pretend,” Mickey said. He itched to light a cigarette but knew that almost everyone in the library was likely to rat on him if the smoke alarm didn’t go off first. He settled back against the wall and scanned the room for threats. “I was gonna warn you before we snuck out, you know.”

            “I’d like more warning,” Gretchen said. “Especially after last time.”

            “Hard when I don’t know where we’re going yet.”

            “That’s a bad sign.”

            “We’ll find a dorm party,” Mickey said. “The big apartments have one practically every night on the weekends.”

            “That’s not safe.”

            “It’s a bunch of drunk college kids in a tiny room.”

            “Fire hazard, alcohol poisoning, and cameras,” Gretchen said. She hadn’t moved an inch during the whole conversation but now she flicked her grey eyes towards him for a nano second. The message was clear: a random dorm party was a no-go.

            “Fine,” Mickey said. “You find a way to get him to trust me.”

            “Whatever you did to prove you’re trash seemed to work. Stick with that.”

            “I’m not spilling my whole tragic life story to the guy to keep him from drinking himself to death,” Mickey said. “If it comes to a choice between the two, you better be prepared to throw him a funeral.”

            “Mickey.”

            He rolled his eyes and settled back against the wall, arms crossed. He knew he should move, that he’d been there too long. Ian couldn’t see them, but any number of other people could, and he didn’t want gossip about how close Ian’s roommate was to his bodyguard. Funny that the rumours would be with Gretchen and not Pax, but dangerous all the same.

            Still, he tried one more tack. “What if I let you mic me?” It was a dangerous move, because if Ian got frisky again he’d definitely find the mic, but Mickey trusted him to keep down to two beers. If his tragic Southside story didn’t keep the kid from alcohol poisoning he didn’t know what else would. “You could hear everything that went on, no matter what.”

            “I want bodies in the room.”

            “Grab a couple newbies and put ‘em on a training mission,” Mickey said. The quicker he agreed to her demands, the more likely she was to humour him. “They can go to the party before us, scout the place out, and tail us once we’re in. Give me a little peace and quiet too.”

            “You know you can’t drink on the job.”

            “Yes, mom,” Mickey said. “But more bodies is a good idea.”

            “Fine. But no mic. Too obvious.”

            Mickey nodded. “Green light then?”

            “Yellow,” Gretchen said. “I’ll tell you if I can get the bodies.”

            Mickey nodded and started out of the library. Gretchen and Paxton had Ian for the rest of the afternoon, his schedule cleared until the next day. Mickey’s fake schedule had him in a History class at the moment, so he couldn’t be seen by Ian unless he wanted to make up a reason he was skipping. Of course, the reason could simply be he’d had e-fucking-nough of the class, but he should give the President’s son some space. The feeling he’d been stalking him had gone away, Ian’s sympathy almost palpable after Sunday night, but he still felt weird spending every waking minute with the guy. It was starting to get to him. He kept thinking about Ian’s smile when he closed his eyes or looked for his face in a crowd he knew he wasn’t in or stayed by his side even when he was supposed to be on a break. He _liked_ being by his side. And too often Mickey would put his fingers to his neck and press into the bruises, try not to gasp through closed lips at the memory of Ian so close.

            He tried his best to shake himself out of it whenever moments like that came over him, but it was harder than it should have been. The guy was damn good looking, gay, and just his type. Mickey tried to remember being annoyed at his romanticization of the Southside, but some part of him found even that endearing. Innocence had always been a weakness of his.

            Mickey shook his head as he approached the dorm and took his keys out of his pocket. To distract himself, he ran through the list of procedures he needed to go through to make sure the room was safe for Ian’s return. He mentally prepared himself to leave the room if Ian decided to return before his class was over. He tried not to think of Ian in the room, finding him there when he shouldn’t be, but the fantasy played itself out in his mind all the same. Innocent, completely innocent, but filled with Ian’s smile, the smile he now graced Mickey with every time he saw him.

            He’d tell himself not to think of Ian at all, but his job was to think of Ian. _It’s a crush, just a crush,_ he reminded himself. The word was a shock to his system. He’d long since conditioned himself to fear the word, to fear the feeling, in order to be safe from his father. Even here, safe in the dorm room, with years of martial arts training behind him and a pocket knife in his shoe, a thousand guns his at the sound of a code word, the word _crush_ could freeze him in place. A safety mechanism that shut down all his feelings immediately and he turned it on Ian quickly. Now Ian was a danger to him. A danger and something he had to protect. Protect himself from Ian, protect Ian from the world. Easy enough.

            Mickey flopped down onto the bed without doing any of the safety checks. He found them unnecessary anyways. The room was safe, secure, even the open window not much of a threat when there was no building across the way for a sniper to shoot from. He was safe.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is the last update until August 29 because I'm going on vacation!


	13. Chapter 13

Ian took a deep breath as he looked at the drop down from the window. He remembered vividly how hard the brick felt against his palms, how his heart had dropped to his feet when he fell, and the warm cushion of Mickey’s body beneath his. _Don’t think about Mickey,_ he warned himself. He gripped the window sill and pushed back, looked over his shoulder at his roommate. “Ready to go?” he asked.

            “Sure,” Mickey said. He was back in the black button down because he insisted that it was the only good shirt he had. Ian wished he wouldn’t wear it. It hugged his body perfectly, stretched taut around muscles and let his stomach relax, a nice pudge Ian wanted to kiss, touch. “I’m out the window first.”

            “Why?” Ian said.

            “So I can catch your ass if you fall.” Mickey shoved him out of the way and swung a leg out the window with zero hesitation. He probably didn’t remember the fall so vividly, or he was used to worse hits.

            Ian shuddered at the thought and contented himself to watch Mickey squeeze through the window. His limbs twisted through the small space, skin showing as his shirt slipped up. Then he hung from the sill for a moment, got his bearings, and slipped out. He climbed down smoothly, every muscle tight, and dropped to the ground when he was a foot away. Looking up at Ian, bright blue eyes shone in the darkness along with a shit-eating grin. “You comin’?”

            Ian swung a leg out the window and followed after. His arms shook the whole way down and his heart shuddered every time his foot scraped stone but didn’t find purchase. When he was low enough, Mickey’s hands grasped his shins and Ian almost fell. The feel of fingers against him, tight and hot, rolled electricity through his whole body. He allowed himself to come down from the wall slowly, Mickey’s guiding hands on his legs, slipped past his ass and straight to his hips as he settled onto the ground. For a moment, neither boy moved. Then Ian cleared his throat and Mickey stepped back.

            “Where’s this party?” Ian asked, mostly to fill the silence.

            “Cluster buildings,” Mickey said. “They’ve got the most space.”

            Ian nodded and headed off that way, Mickey close on his tail. He noticed the other boy’s gaze on him, could feel when it moved away, which was often. It was like Mickey purposefully pulled his eyes off of him and that thought made Ian’s whole body buzz. But he had made himself clear with Mickey. Nothing could happen. He had three more years in the closet before anything could happen with anyone.

            They made it to the Cluster buildings and entered through a door propped open by a cardboard box. Music pounded in the stairwell, shook the concrete steps. People hung out on the railings, sipped out of red Solo cups. Ian could feel the party in his veins, the music in his bones, the alcohol sharp in the air. He itched for a drink, mentally reminded himself that he’d promised Mickey no more than two.

            He started to turn onto the second floor but Mickey grabbed his arm. “One more.”

            “Party’s in here,” Ian said. Through the glass door, he could see people milling about in the hallways and two open doors with the lights off inside. Candles illuminated people dancing and drinking and doing keg stands.

            Mickey’s grip tightened, pulled. “Party’s everywhere, come on.”

            Ian stumbled away from the door with a frown on his face. He shook Mickey off and went up another flight of stairs, turned onto the third floor. He went straight for the kitchen, straight for the drinks, and heard Mickey sigh behind him. He ignored it. Two drinks was still the plan, the first one just needed to come fast.

            “Hey!” a blonde girl behind the island said. She looked up at him with brilliant blue eyes, eyes that almost matched Mickey’s. She poured a whole can of beer into a cup and held it out to him. When he reached for it, she pulled it back and said, “Uh-uh-uh. A kiss for a cup. It’s the rules.” She tapped her cheek with a finger.

            Ian darted forward and kissed her quick, faster than anyone could have gotten a picture. With a pout, she handed him the cup and he downed half of it as he walked away. He waited a few minutes and drank the rest of it, crumpled the cup and threw it to the side. No buzz. The alcoholism and Irish blood really did a number on his ability to get drunk quickly.

            He saw Mickey eyeing him as he went back for another drink, kissed the girl on the cheek again. He forced himself to sip at this one as a brunette pulled him onto the dance floor, pressed her body close to his. Her hair, silky smooth, rubbed across his collarbone as her hands slid down the sides of his thighs. Finishing the drink, Ian pushed away from her and headed back to the counter.

            Mickey caught his arm again, grip rough. Ian gave him a look, then pointedly looked at his hand. He knew he was being a rich bitch but couldn’t be bothered to care when Mickey was so close to him, smelling more like sweat and beer than the rest of the party, and with a delicious hint of stubble on his chin. He forced himself to breathe before he met Mickey’s eyes again, one eyebrow raised.

            “No more,” Mickey said.

            “Right, dad.”

            Ian shook him off and headed for the blonde. She offered him a thin smile, but little more as she poured the drink. Taking a chance, Ian took her by the hips and turned her to him. “How much do I get for a kiss on the lips?”

            She giggled and her smile brightened. “One drink for the cheek, two for the lips.”

            “Tongue.”

            “Three.”

            Ian dipped his head to kiss the girl, got within an inch of her glossed lips before a hand dug into the back of his t-shirt, pulled him back roughly. Mickey stepped around so he faced him and pushed him hard out of the kitchen, into an empty room. “What the fuck do you think you’re doing?” Mickey asked.

            “Getting drinks,” Ian said. He scratched the back of his neck, tried hard not to dart a glance towards the half open door. It wouldn’t be hard to close it just by crowding Mickey.

            “By kissing some girl?” Mickey said. “You really want that kind of scandal on the front page tomorrow?”

            “I doubt anyone gives a shit about me kissing a girl.”

            “For someone who’s been on the campaign trail before, you’re a fuckin’ idiot.”

            Ian tilted his head, fixed his gaze on Mickey’s. He took a step forward, smiled, and said, “What’s the real issue here? You jealous?” He reached out a hand to fold down Mickey’s collar and Mickey batted him away.

            “Fuck off.”

            “Come on,” Ian said. “I see the way you look at me. I saw it before I kissed you. And now you’re pulling me away from blonde coeds I want to kiss? Suspicious.”

            “You’re drunk.”

            “I’m not,” Ian replied, but the words made him think for a second. Two beers was nothing to his system, but it had effectively shut off his word filter. He took another step closer and Mickey bumped into the door. His Adam’s apple bobbed violently. “I want this. I want you.”

            Mickey held up a warning hand, his other hand on the door to keep it open. “You’re drunk.”

            “I had two beers, my uncle’s an alcoholic, and I had nine last time and was still upright.”

            “Barely.”

            Ian curled his hand into the collar of Mickey’s shirt, pulled it down enough to see the faded marks he had made. Yellowed against Mickey’s skin, they barely stuck out, but Mickey had taken care to keep them hidden each and every day. Exposed, they sent a chill through Ian. He had done that. He had marked up the man in front of him with his own lips, his own tongue, tasted his skin beneath his lips. He leaned in to do it again.

            “Ian,” Mickey snapped. He let go of the door to take his last step back, banged up against the wood as the doorknob clicked shut. Fingers in fingers, Mickey pulled Ian’s hand off his collar. “We can’t do this.”

            “Here?” Ian finished. He closed the space between their bodies and heard their belt buckles click together. With a breath, his brain turned on like a lightning bolt. He had made a terrible mistake opening his mouth, but he’d done it. He’d come on to Mickey, pressed him up against a wall, and after only two drinks. Mickey could say he was drunk all he wanted, but he had to know he wasn’t. Ian took a breath. He’d already gone too far. “We can go back to our room if you want.”

            “No, we can’t,” Mickey said, his voice soft.

            Ian leaned in and kissed him. Mickey’s mouth was clean from alcohol, rough as sandpaper. Loose skin on his lips scarred Ian and his tongue was strong, dominant in their mouths. Mickey moaned when Ian pressed closer, right into his mouth, and Ian tied his fingers into Mickey’s hair, pulled back hard. Mickey whimpered.

            Ian rolled his hips into Mickey’s as he slipped his lips down Mickey’s chin and onto his neck. He bit into the skin, sucked around it nice and hard. He placed hickeys kitty-corner to the old ones, overlapped in patterns and markers like he wanted to paint Mickey as his. He’d suck out his name if he had time, if he couldn’t feel Mickey hardening against him, only the slight pressure of their bodies enough for him. Ian sucked on Mickey’s earlobe, whispered, “You like that?”

            “Ian...” Mickey said. His voice broke utterly around the word, desperate and shaky.

            Ian hummed into his ear and spread a hand across Mickey’s chest, deftly undid the buttons there. He spread his fingers over rough skin, pinched a nipple and was rewarded with a wrecked groan. Mickey whimpered every few seconds, still under Ian’s ministrations, until he said, “Ian?”

            “Yeah, babe?”

            Mickey seemed to freeze at the nickname and pressed himself flatter against the door, the best he could do to get away from Ian. Ian paused the movement of his hand, met the other boy’s eyes. Deep blue, they were wide with tears and Ian immediately stepped away, held his hands up as if in surrender. Maybe he was drunker than he thought.

            “I’m sorry,” Ian said.

            “No, it’s not...” Mickey took a deep breath and pushed off the door. He started to do up the buttons on his shirt quickly. “Look, it’s fine. Whatever. But we can’t do this, okay? We just... fuckin’ can’t.”

            “Why not?”

            “Do I have to give you a reason to say no? Are you that used to people throwin’ themselves at you?”

            Ian flinched and took another step back. He shook his head. “I just... wondered.”

            “I can’t have an affair with the President’s son,” Mickey said, his voice soft.

            “So it’s about who I am?”

            “Yes.”

            Ian paused for a long moment, then nodded. “Get out of here,” he said. “I’ll follow in a few minutes.”

            Thankfully, Mickey nodded and left.

            Ian sat down on the bed, forced himself to breathe. Pressing the heels of his hands to his eyes, he blinked back tears. The President’s son. Of course someone like Mickey would have a problem hooking up with someone like him, no matter what he acted like in the daylight. Two beers. Two beers and somehow Ian had lost his filter, his sanity, and his ability to tell when someone wanted to fuck him. Maybe he should give up alcohol altogether.


	14. Chapter 14

Mickey gave Ian his space the best he could over the next few days. What would have been an easy task since Ian did his best to avoid him and their bedroom was harder because Mickey’s job was the exact opposite of avoiding Ian. And he couldn’t exactly tell Gretchen that he’d rejected the President’s son’s advances by using the one thing Ian hated the most about himself against him: he was the President’s son.

            Guilt ate at Mickey. What he had said was the truth. The only reason he wouldn’t hook up with Ian was because he was the President’s son. Anyone else with that face, that body, Ian’s strength and humour and friendliness, and Mickey would’ve been a goner ages ago. Likely Mickey would’ve let Ian fuck him into oblivion the first night he’d come on to him. But Ian was his charge, his protectorate, and he needed to do everything in his power to keep him safe without compromising their relationship. Hard when their relationship wasn’t the typical bodyguard-protectee relationship.

            Mickey got cornered by Paxton Tuesday when he’d flat out refused to go help Ian study Shakespeare in the library. Gretchen had requested the back-up because there were two giggling teenage girls at Ian’s table, but Mickey had said he could handle himself. After all, if girls weren’t a threat, Mickey refused to worry about them.

            There was a knock on the dorm door and Mickey looked up from his desk. Paxton walked in, hands in jean pockets. He almost looked young enough to be a student, maybe a TA. He sat down on the bottom of Mickey’s bed and said, “Gretchen wants you.”

            “I told her to fuck off.”

            “You know just because the President told you to act Southside doesn’t mean you have to revert completely back to your roots, right?”

            Mickey smirked. “If I had reverted completely back to my roots, Ian would be dead and I’d be long fucking gone.” He turned back to his desk and highlighted a line on the report he was reading – some shit about how security protocols were changing throughout the world.

            “What happened?” Paxton asked.

            “Nothing.”

            “At the party, two agents reported that you and Ian went alone into a bedroom for fifteen minutes and then came out separately,” Paxton said. His voice was deadpan, no accusation or assumption under it. All the same, it made Mickey bristle. Paxton added, “The agents then said that Ian left the party, you on his tail but at a distance and that you waited twenty minutes before you followed him into the building.”

            “He needs space. He’s not a fucking puppy dog.”

            “What happened in that room? You two have been cold to each other ever since.”

            “I can’t tell you.”

            “Why not?”

            “Because it’s above your fucking clearance level,” Mickey snapped. He turned in his chair to fix Paxton with his best don’t-fuck-with-me glare and clenched his hands into fists. For one wild moment he wished for his tattoos back, to really drive home the message of intimidation. “You and Gretch may be my bosses, but I’m Ian’s close guard. You don’t need to know everything that happens between us.”

            Paxton sat unfazed. He didn’t even move an inch, just stared back at Mickey through his gold spectacles. “We need to know anything that affects the safety of the President’s son. And if you’re openly refusing to protect him, if the two of you are estranged in any way, that puts his safety in danger. If I or Gretchen can help you reconcile, you need to tell us what happened.”

            “You want me to go study fucking Shakespeare?” Mickey grabbed the collected works off his desk and shoved it in his bag. In a violent motion, he rose from the desk, swung his bag over his shoulder, and took a sharp step towards the door. “I’ll go study fucking Shakespeare.”

            He walked out of the room without acknowledging whether or not Paxton had a response. His heart beat harder in his chest. He couldn’t avoid both of them forever, couldn’t keep up the charade of nothing was wrong, but he couldn’t out Ian either. It was, exactly as he’d said, above their clearance level. Hell, it was above _his_ clearance level, but he knew. He knew and he had to do his best to keep it hidden.

            Heading for the library, Mickey mentally prepared himself for Ian’s cold look. It’d become a regularity whenever Ian had to look at Mickey and the deadness of the gaze threw him constantly. He wanted to apologize, but it was hard to say anything. What was there to say? Sorry you’re the President’s son? Sorry we can’t hook up? Sorry I’m secretly Secret Service and can’t sleep with you because of my job? Yeah, all of that would go over really well.

            Mickey walked into the library and took the stairs two at a time up to the second floor. He gave Gretchen a nod as he came in, but took the long way to Ian’s table to avoid talking to her. He slipped into the seat next to Ian without a word, felt green eyes on him sharp for a second and then gone a moment later. The girls’ conversation faltered momentarily but picked up without hesitation once Mickey settled. Both were brunettes with small, heart-shaped faces, alike enough to be mistaken for sisters, but each one had different dominant and recessive traits. They spoke with the ease of friendship with none of the animosity of siblings. They were excited to be sitting with the President’s son, had obviously chosen the spot on purpose, but neither struck Mickey as brave enough to ask to suck Ian’s dick under the table. The biggest threat they offered was that they might Snapchat a secret picture of Ian to their friends and that was no threat at all.

            For three awkward hours they sat there and studied. Then Ian stood up and Mickey started to pack up.

            “You don’t need to come with me,” Ian said.

            Mickey paused, one hand on his bag, poised to get out of his chair. He resisted the urge to throw a glance at Gretchen and ask for back-up as was protocol when dealing with someone who didn’t want protection. Instead he shrugged and threw his bag over his shoulder. “Only so much Shakespeare you can read in a day.”

            “Whatever.” Ian started to walk and Mickey had to fight to keep up, one of Ian’s steps almost three of his. Gretchen moved when they passed her and stayed a good three feet behind them.

            Mickey went for it. “We need to talk about what happened.”

            “Do we?”

            “If it’s gonna make living with you unbearable, then yeah,” Mickey said. “If you were a normal fuckin’ person and just let it go, then I’d say fuck it.”

            Ian shot him a glare and lowered his voice near to a hiss. “You want me to just let it go that you won’t sleep with me because of who my dad is?”

            “Just because everyone else _wants_ to sleep with you because of that—”

            “Fuck you.”

            “Ian.” Mickey grabbed his arm and pulled him closer. Their hips knocked together but Mickey kept their steps natural, forced their closeness to look natural. He whispered, “There’s a lot you don’t know about me and the last thing I need is to get wrapped up in a scandal with the President’s son. That’s the kind of thing that could get my dad back in my life, and I don’t want that, okay?”

            Ian stared at him for a moment. “What’s so bad about your dad?”

            “Name a violent crime and he’s committed it,” Mickey said. He let go of Ian’s arm and gave him a bit of space. “He’ll take any chance to con a person and if I’m with you... that’s just askin’ him to come knocking.”

            “We’ll be careful.”

            “You know shit like this breaks. Shit like this always breaks.”

            “I’ve kept it a secret through three campaigns.”

            “’Cause you’re a fuckin’ virgin,” Mickey snapped.”It’s easier to discover an action than a secret.”

            For a long moment, Ian was silent. They exited the library and walked out into the rain. Gretchen approached with an umbrella which she used to cover both their heads while she threw a hood over hers. When they’d taken a few steps, Ian said, “You’re trying to protect me.”

            “Yes,” Mickey said.

            “Don’t you think I have enough protection?”

            “Not from this.”

            Ian sighed. “Fine.”

            “We’re good?”

            Ian forced a smile. “Yeah, good.”


	15. Chapter 15

They weren’t good. They were far from good. But that didn’t mean Ian was about to give up on a hot guy that did want to fuck him and was just too scared to. He knew how to seduce, he’d seen enough TV, and it was incredibly easy to do in the small space of the dorm room.

            He took to taking runs in the morning, coming back when Mickey woke up. His body covered in sweat, he’d lift his tank top to his eyes to wipe away the drips. He could feel Mickey’s eyes on him, following the curves of his abs, the strength in his arms. When he dropped the shirt, he always offered his best _you can have it_ smile and Mickey would turn away with a cough.

            Dropping his towel when he came back from a shower was also a new favourite tactic of his. Mickey did his best to keep his eyes on his book when he did it, but Ian knew he was stealing glances. Ian had always known he was big, bigger than average, but Mickey appreciative gaze made it real. One time he caught Mickey licking his lips while Ian pulled up his boxers and he’d turned away with a blush.

            September was still passably warm in D.C. so he wore shorts and tank tops when he could, showed off his strength, his muscles, his skin whenever he could. Mickey had a great habit of staying close to him no matter how annoying he was – probably because he wanted to see what Ian had to offer – and it made everything so much easier.

            One day at the gym, Ian was doing pull-ups when Mickey stopped lifting weights beside him. The other man’s panting breaths made Ian pause, swing from the bar with straight arms. Blue eyes met his and Mickey said, “Think you might wanna slow down? You’re gonna give the girls around here a heart attack.”

            “Just the girls?”

            “I told you no,” Mickey said, his voice rough.

            Ian dropped from the bar and threw his towel over his shoulder, rubbed the back of his neck. He flexed his arm as he did it, watched Mickey’s gaze stray. “I like being protected,” Ian said. He lowered his voice considerably and caught Mickey’s eye. “It turns me on.”

            “Then fuck Pax,” Mickey said.

            “Maybe I will,” Ian said. He started to walk, thought he heard Mickey swearing behind him, and then the other man caught up. Ian glanced his way with a smile and said, “Just joking.”

            “You know, if you gave the fuck up, it’d be appreciated,” Mickey said.

            Ian snorted and pushed through the door into the locker room. Paxton had entered just a few feet ahead of them and stood to the side of Ian’s locker, arms crossed in front of him. “Hey, Pax,” Ian said instead of answering Mickey. “Tell me something. Am I irresistible?”

            Paxton laughed. “Am I fired if I say no?”

            Ian looked like he was considering and then shrugged. “I think I could let it slide.” He opened his locker in a smooth motion and glanced over at Mickey, who was glaring daggers at one of them, which one he wasn’t quite sure. “The real question is, if I was trying to get into your pants, would I succeed?”

            “Well, based on recent knowledge, I’d have to say if you’ve tried before the answer is no.”

            Mickey laughed at that, tried to cover it with a cough. He opened up his own locker to cover his face and Ian pulled his towel from his locker. Folding it over his shoulder, he said, “If we say I haven’t tried before?”

            “You’re very determined, Mr. Gallagher.”

            Ian shot a smug smile over his shoulder at Mickey and then started for the showers. Once again, his roommate was quickly at his heels. He had started to feel like Mickey was part of his protection detail, his close guard, and it was a disconcertingly comfortable feeling, like being protected was his natural state. He shook off the feeling. Mickey was just a guy from the Southside, protecting him from scandal, sure, but not a bullet. He was free from most of his protection detail here. Oddly, the thought sent a chill through him.

            “What the fuck are you doing?” Mickey hissed. “You almost outed yourself.”

            “Pax doesn’t know who I was talking about.”

            “You were talking about getting in _his_ pants.”

            “Pax is gay.”

            “I know, but—”

            “You know?” Ian turned on Mickey as he dropped his shorts. Mickey licked his lips, his whole body tense with the effort to keep his eyes on Ian’s. Ian almost smiled, almost. “How do you know? He doesn’t usually tell people.”

            “My gaydar’s not shit.”

            “You didn’t know with me.”

            Mickey rolled his eyes and stripped himself. While he moved, he said, “Not one hundred percent accurate, asshole, just not shit.”

            Ian had to let the topic go. Had to because it was taking everything he had not to kiss Mickey right then and there. The man was beautiful, smooth porcelain skin and a slight tummy he wanted so badly to run his fingers over. His ass jiggled with every movement, plump and ready. Thighs slick together, Ian wanted to spread them apart with his fingers, lay gentle hickeys to the skin there. And his dick, smaller than Ian’s but nothing to scoff at, hung in a beautiful curve. He wanted to feel the tip at the back of his throat, choke around it.

            Mickey snapped in his face. “Try not to get hard in the fucking showers.”

            Ian met his eyes, tried to swallow his blush. “I could say the same thing.”

            Rolling his eyes, Mickey headed in before him and Ian got another look at that beautiful ass. How easy it would be to grab it, step forward and take it in his hands, but he knew there was more than one thing wrong with his plan. Mickey had said no. He was the President’s son. They were in a public place, filled with people, and he didn’t have the luxury of clearing it out to press Mickey up against the wet tiled walls and have his way with him.

            Forcing a deep breath, Ian cleared the images from his mind and walked into the showers. He took one a few away from Mickey and kept his eyes down, cleaned himself quickly. True, the showers were a great place to torture his roommate, but it would also torture him at the same time, and he couldn’t have rumours flying around that the President’s son was hard in the men’s showers.

            Beside him, two guys were having a conversation about a party they were throwing in their dorm. Each one had a girl they wanted to hit on and said it would be more convenient if their bedrooms were close by. As they worked out the logistics of throwing a party on one of the dorm floors, Ian’s mind ran away with the idea. He had no doubt with his fame he could convince everyone on his floor to join in on a party and, with his bedroom right there, it’d be easy to lure Mickey back to a safe space. Of course, Mickey wouldn’t do anything if he was drunk, might not do anything at all if he didn’t play his cards right, but he knew his roommate was already on edge. A couple more days of this, a loud party to block out his thoughts, and a couple well placed kisses would do him in just perfectly.

            Ian stepped out of the shower and toweled off, waited for Mickey with his towel around his waist outside the showers. Mickey gave him one look as he walked out, said nothing, and headed back to their lockers. His ability to not look at Ian’s chest was truly incredible, but Ian felt the stolen glances, heard Mickey swear under his breath more than once as Ian dressed. When he had all his clothes on, he said, “I think we should throw a party.”

            “What, is sneaking—” Mickey shut his mouth fast as he glanced at Paxton, then looked back at Ian. “Why?”

            Ian shrugged. “Meet some people, see what the college experience is really like. I bet I could get the floor on board.”

            “I bet your security would check people at the door,” Mickey said.

            Ian smiled. “Might make it more fun for some people. Meet the President’s son, unarmed.”

            Mickey snorted and looked up at Paxton. Ian looked the same way, saw the man consider their conversation. Then, with a sigh, he said, “I’ll run it past Gretchen.”


	16. Chapter 16

Ian Gallagher was going to fucking kill him.

            In just a handful of days he’d managed to etch the memory of every curve and dimple of his body into Mickey’s mind. And he’d also managed to not give the guy one fucking second to himself so he could jack off and get it out of his system. No, Ian somehow managed to always be there, even when Mickey wasn’t supposed to be on protection detail, and it drove him up the fucking wall. He was half-tempted to stage an attack on Ian in order to put an end to the ridiculous reduced security and get himself ejected from his position. It might be worth it if it meant not having to stare at that unattainable dick every single day.

            Mickey got a slight reprieve because he was sent out to buy beer and solo cups for the dorm party. Gretchen gave him a look when he came back, said nothing. The dorm lounge was starting to look like it could actually hold a real rager; the small space transformed into a sitting area and a table filled to the brim with snacks, beer, and cups.

            Mickey dropped down in one of the chairs at the table and stared at the food. Gretchen walked in behind him and said, “You know this is going to be a hard thing to keep control of, right?”

            “As long as he stays sober, we’ll be fine,” Mickey said. “Guy hasn’t left my fucking side in days.”

            “How are you doing with that?”

            “I could use a vacation.”

            Gretchen nodded. “I’ll see if I can get you a weekend off, say you’re going up to see your folks or something.”

            “Will we have people in the crowd?”

            “A couple.”

            Their conversation cut off as Ian walked into the room, mercifully wearing jeans and a green t-shirt. Okay, well, merciful was pushing it. The jeans were still too tight on his thighs and the shirt was the exact right shade of green to bring out Ian’s eyes. If Mickey’s eyes wandered to the sizeable bulge at the front of Ian’s pants that might have been why Gretchen hit him in the back of the head.

            Mickey coughed and said, “Anything else we need for the party?”

            “Don’t think so,” Ian said. He looked up at Gretchen. “You got your security protocol in place?”

            Gretchen smirked and tapped the gun at her side. “All good.”

            Ian left the room and Mickey spent the rest of the afternoon in Ian’s absence, feeling it like a hole in his chest. He knew he could just go back to the room, that Ian would be there, but he felt like the detox would be good for him. He needed to be on his game this evening, ready to jump in at any sign of trouble. Dorm parties often got out of hand with furniture and people going out the windows, and he couldn’t lose the President’s son to an unfortunate mattress surfing competition. Therefore, he needed to take a breath and get his head on straight, or as straight as it could go. He called his sister to see how she was doing, studied for the Shakespeare test he had on Monday, and finally went back to the dorm room with eight minutes to spare to get changed.

            When he walked in, Ian had nothing but boxers on. He pulled on possibly even tighter black jeans and turned to smile at Mickey as he did up the button. “You ready?” he said.

            Mickey faked a smile. “Totally.”

            Ian slapped him with the shirt in his hand before shrugging it over broad shoulders. “Show a little excitement. Maybe you’ll get laid tonight.”

            Mickey made a noncommittal sound and busied himself with getting dressed. The same good shirt he always wore along with his least ripped pair of jeans. The one thing he missed about Secret Service detail was the suits, slick and easy, not one of them ripped or frayed or a reminder of his old life. As his eyes fluttered over the muscle shirts and cut-off sweatshirts, the ripped pants and dirt-stained jeans, he reminded himself that he got out. He got out and Mandy got out and Iggy got out. Their dad no longer had to taint memories of the Southside for them.

            “Mick?” Ian said. Mickey turned to see Ian’s eyes on him, worried. Ian asked, “You okay?”

            “Just... thinking.”

            “About?”

            “I think I need new clothes.” Mickey kicked the closet doors closed and buttoned up his shirt. When Ian didn’t stop staring, he said, “What?”

            “I, umm, I’ll pay for them,” Ian said.

            Mickey snorted. “I don’t need your fucking charity.”

            “I just meant—”

            “Let’s go.”

            Mickey made for the door with Ian on his heels and they emerged out into the first trickles of the party. It was mostly people from their floor and a couple from other places in the building, but Ian walked around like they were his best friends. Mickey took up position leaning against a wall that had a good vantage point of the party and watched as Ian’s easy politician’s smile took over the room. Bright and beaming, he held all the qualities that his father lacked: charisma, openness, friendliness, trustworthiness. Clayton had been hired on power, tough on crime, not on his likeability as a politician. The entire campaign had been a miracle, to be honest, and Mickey wasn’t completely sure that the election had been won fairly.

            He started to count Ian’s beers as soon as he cracked one open. He itched for one himself, just to take the edge off, but he stopped staring at the cans when he caught Gretchen looking. On duty. Maybe he really did need that weekend off.

            As the party went on, Mickey slid further down the wall. The more parties he went to, the more obvious it became that people steered clear of him. Maybe it was how rude he’d been at the first party or the fact that he’d continued to be rude at the second. Either way, it suited him just fine to be able to watch Ian through the crowd undisturbed. If he got bored, he could just search for the other undercover agents. He was up to three. A fake frat boy wearing a baseball cap too low over his eyes, a grad student with a sweater that covered too much skin, and a slutty school girl who’d yet to put down her bag. “A couple” in Gretchen talk meant five, so he still had two to go.

            While looking for them, he glanced back at Ian who was flirting with a redhead. She laughed at everything he said, clearly a few too many drinks in, and laid her palms on his chest. No real threat, so Mickey let it slide. That is, he let it slide until he looked back to where they’d been standing and they were gone, nowhere in sight. At least he’d caught the fourth undercover agent: a football player with his laces tied too loosely.

            “Who’s got eyes on Firebird?” Mickey whispered into his watch.

            “He left the room with that girl,” Paxton said through the earpiece. “Headed to your room.”

            Mickey muttered a curse and stalked out of the room. Moving fast, he caught Ian in front of their door with his hands on the girl’s waist. He grabbed the girl’s shoulder and pulled her back, hard. “The fuck are you doing?” he asked Ian.

            Ian simply stared at him, mock innocence on his face. “Brandy wanted to see our bedroom.”

            “Brandy wanted to fuck you and get pictures,” Mickey snapped. He glared at the girl over his shoulder and said, “Scram.” The girl ran.

            Ian smiled, a little too brightly, and laid a hand against the wall. Four beers in and he was a little unsteady, just flirty enough to take a step closer. “You jealous, Mick?” Ian whispered. “You don’t have to be jealous.” He ran a finger across the buttons of Mickey’s shirt, hooked one into the waistband of his jeans and pulled him flush to his chest. “You can have me.”

            “Ian,” Mickey growled, unable to steady his voice. “I’m not doin’ this again.”

            Ian closed the space between their lips, laid light and indefinably sweet kisses on Mickey’s skin. He pressed closer until Mickey backed up against the wall, pressed kisses down the length of his neck, murmured words so soft Mickey lost them to his slur.

            “We can’t do this here.”

            “Then come inside,” Ian said.

            “I’m not doing this.”

            “Because I’m the President’s son?”

            “Yes.”

            Ian nipped at the skin just under Mickey’s chin and got a whimper out of him. “Come inside,” Ian said, “or I’ll take you apart out here.”

            Mickey held out exactly two more seconds before he said, “Okay,” and let Ian drag him into their bedroom.

            Hands on his shirt, Ian wasted no time getting skin on skin once the door was closed and Mickey was pressed up against it. For a virgin he was fast, his kisses sloppy, tantalizing. He dragged his tongue across Mickey’s jaw, bit smooth hickeys into the skin of his neck, and Mickey lost the ability to protest. He was sure that had been his goal when he had agreed to go inside, to get Ian to stop, but now he wondered what part of him had ever wanted to stop. Clearly not the part of him that all his blood was rushing to.

            Ian’s lips dipped to his collarbone. He slipped Mickey’s shirt over his head and made his way down his chest, played a thumb over a nipple. Mickey let out a wrecked sound, a little whimper, and broke his own spell by doing so. He threaded fingers through Ian’s hair and tugged a little, tried to get him to stop, but Ian kept going down.

            “Ian,” Mickey said. He bit his bottom lip hard to stop a gasp when Ian paused to suck at his hip. “We can’t... we can’t... Jesus Christ, we just can’t.”

            “Mmm.” Ian’s long fingers undid the button on his jeans and Mickey leaned his head back against the door. He had a moment of utter clarity in which he listed every single reason he was getting fired before Ian had his pants down and was nosing at his cock through his boxers.

            “Ian...” Mickey said, one last desperate try before cotton was at his knees and Ian’s hand was tight around the base of his cock. Ian’s tongue played at the slit, slipped under as he suckled the head and then licked up the shaft. “Fuck. How are you so good at that?”

            “Porn,” Ian said. Then he swallowed Mickey down all at once and gagged.

            Mickey pulled him off, hid his laugh best he could in a snort and said, “You might wanna go slow on the porno mechanics, huh?”

            “You liked it,” Ian said. His lips were red velvet, stretched around the kind of smile that would get him punched in Mickey’s neighbourhood. His head bent back without protest in Mickey’s grip, pliable, and Mickey let go before his thoughts got away from him.

            Ian went back down without a word, licked and sucked and kissed the insides of Mickey’s thighs. He stroked his dick lazily with one hand and rolled his balls when he got close. Mickey knew the sounds coming out of his mouth must have been sinful, for every time he felt his lips open Ian’s response was a rumble of pleasure around his cock. But he had stopped registering his own noise and instead was listening to the party outside, trying to see if anyone was coming for them, hearing the chatter of the earpiece. And when Ian slipped off, leaving him painfully hard and red between his legs, he was back to his speech on why, exactly, he had let the President’s son suck his dick.

            Ian stood and gave Mickey a bruising kiss, scrambled his last working brain cells. Breathily, Ian said, “I want you to fuck me.”

            “No.”

            “I thought we were past you saying no.”

            Mickey almost laughed as he shook his head. At this point, fuck it. He wanted this and he was fired whether he stopped here or went the whole way. “I mean I’m not gonna fuck you,” Mickey said. “I’ve seen what you’re packin’ and we ain’t letting that go to waste.”

            Ian smiled and dipped in for another kiss, bit at his skin. Mickey pushed him back, got him down on the bed with some struggle and slipped off his shirt. He rutted his hard, leaking dick against the friction of Ian’s jeans, knowing he was ruining the black denim, and asked, “Condoms?”

            “Don’t need ‘em.”

            “Lube?”

            Ian shook his head.

            With a sigh, Mickey pulled back. “You’re lucky I’m your first, or you woulda fuckin’ died.” He got to his feet, a little unsteady, and started to look around the room for his shirt.

            Ian sat up on the bed and said, “You’re leaving?”

            “I gotta fucking find a condom and some lube, don’t I?” Mickey said. He grabbed his shirt off the floor and threw it over his head. Then he slipped his boxers back on, tucked himself into his jeans and hoped the bulge wasn’t all that noticeable. Part of him realized this was the perfect time to stop this, to just tell Ian they couldn’t do anything without supplies and to spend the rest of the night kissing lazily on the bed, and then explain the situation to the President in the morning. He’d be in trouble, sure, but a hell of a lot less trouble than if he actually fucked Ian.

            However, that part of Mickey was very small and when he went out into the hall to find condoms and lube, he made sure to tell the other agents that Firebird was safely in his room for the night. He waited for the confirmations of stand down to come in through his earpiece and then stuffed both it and his watch into the back pocket of his jeans.

            Condoms were easy enough to find. The first guy Mickey asked had half a package of extra large ones stuffed in his back pocket. Mickey took three, just to get the guy to stop winking at him, and started to look for the right target to ask for lube. There weren’t any other gay guys on their floor (there were at least three girls that Mickey would have categorized as bi-curious, but they wouldn’t be any help) so he had to scan the guests for the right person. Not only someone gay, but someone gay with a big enough ego to believe they were getting laid and take lube packets with them to a dorm party.

            It took maybe ten minutes for Mickey to find the right guy and another seven to convince him he wasn’t going to need eighteen packets of lube. He parted with two, but Mickey knew he could get by with that many, so he left before the guy could ask too many questions about who exactly Mickey had stashed back in his dorm room.

            When he got back to the room, Ian was sitting up on the bed, still shirtless, playing on his phone. He looked up with a smile and said, “I was starting to think you jumped out a window.”

            “Thought about it,” Mickey said. It wasn’t even a lie. When he’d seen the lobby window wide open he’d considered making a run for it. He rested back against the door and locked it, threw the condoms and lube on the bed. “Couldn’t make myself.”

            “I’m too irresistible?” Ian said as he reached up to wrap his arms around Mickey’s neck. He pulled him in for a kiss.

            Against his lips, Mickey murmured, “I’m too stupid.” He crawled on top of Ian and began to slowly undress himself again. Ian helped, too restless at the slow pace, groaning when Mickey purposefully fumbled with his zipper in order to roll his hips against Ian. The jig was up when he smiled into the kiss and Ian pulled his pants down fast, struggled to get out of his own.

            Mickey slid a hand up the length of Ian’s dick slowly, reverently. He was half hard and already bigger than Mickey had ever taken. He absentmindedly considered going back for more lube, discarded the idea. It was miracle he’d made it back without running into Gretchen and Paxton in the first place. If he went out now, he’d definitely run into them and then he’d end up taking care of the party instead of Ian.

            “Move your hand,” Ian said.

            “Impatient,” Mickey mumbled. He’d pulled back from the kiss just to look at Ian, naked beneath him, a tall Adonis with perfect abs and a dick of the Gods. He felt small and fat in comparison, but with Ian pulling at him, begging for him, it was a hard comparison to dwell on. Tightening his grip, he sped up his strokes until Ian was gasping beneath him and fully hard.

            Mickey rolled the condom over his length and then opened up the lube. He spread it on his fingers and then reached back to prepare himself. Grunting at the intrusion, he slowly moved one finger in and out of his hole, throwing his head back to breathe.

            “Beautiful,” Ian murmured.

            Mickey added a second finger and fucked back on his hand, let out a wild groan.

            “You look so good like this,” Ian said.

            Mickey looked down at him, at the hazy glaze of his eyes. Concerned, he tapped the palm of his hand against Ian’s cheek and said, “You okay?”

            Ian licked his lips, shook his head a bit and Mickey slowed his preparations. “Sorry,” Ian said. “Yeah, I’m good.”

            “You sure?”

            “Kiss me.”

            Mickey did what he was told, made sure to move his lips slow, to ease into the feeling of it. He pulled out his fingers and felt cold air against his hole, but tried not to squirm. Ian was hot under him, their dicks pressed between their bodies, their tongues brushed together slow.

            “You ready?” Ian murmured between their lips.

            Mickey thought that must have been his line, but he let Ian have it and nodded. He rested back on his knees and took Ian’s dick in his hand. Slowly, he guided himself onto it, biting his lip to stop himself from making too much noise. After a few seconds, Ian bottomed out, and Mickey felt the sweet burn of fullness. He rolled his hips a few times, let himself acclimate to the size as Ian moaned underneath him with every movement. Then Mickey pulled himself up and pushed himself down, slowly at first and then in more of a rhythm. Ian bucked up into him and found his prostate, hit it not every time, but close.

            “Fuck,” Mickey murmured. “Fuck, you feel so good.” He spread his hands out over Ian’s chest, played with a nipple absently as he rode Ian’s dick. Ian was all but incoherent underneath him, his thrusts erratic, and Mickey started to murmur sweet words to him, tried to keep his hips down with a hand but it was no use. Ian was a lot stronger than him and not used to taking orders. Mickey started to stroke himself off, knew Ian wouldn’t last much longer, and squeezed his ass around every one of Ian’s thrusts.

            Ian came fast and hard and Mickey got a few more thrusts out of him before he pulled away, rolled over to lie on his back next to Ian. He continued to stroke himself off, his ass burned and loose, cold.

            “Sorry,” Ian said.

            “No worries.”

            “Let me,” he said. The full condom still hung to his limp cock, slipping more by the second, as he rolled over Mickey. He kissed quickly down his sternum until the head of Mickey’s cock was once again in his mouth. He slipped down onto his knees on the floor and licked at the slit, pulled back just enough to say, “Fuck my mouth.”

            “Whoa,” Mickey said. He was half hazy himself from sex, from the heat of Ian’s lips, from the steady way they worked up his length, but alarm bells went off in his head at that. He sat up and pulled at Ian’s hair. He came off with a wet smack. “Bad idea. Remember when I said to chill on the porn?”

            “I want to.”

            “That’s not beginner shit, Ian,” Mickey said. “It hurts and it’s hard and you almost fucking puked before.”

            Ian let his jaw fall slack, red lips parted in an O, his only response.

            Mickey hesitated, then put his own hand around his dick. He stroked off hard and fast, met Ian’s eyes to make sure it was okay. Ian gave an almost imperceptible nod right before Mickey shot off, white cum covering Ian’s lips and cheeks. A few flecks hit his eyelashes.

            Mickey dipped to the ground in front of him, kissed him hard. Then he licked it off his face, wiped his eyes with his thumbs. Bright green eyes stared back at him, silent and loving. Mickey felt his heart skip a beat.

            “You okay?” Mickey whispered.

            “Yeah,” Ian said. “You?”

            Mickey nodded and pulled Ian back up into the bed. He wrapped his arms around Ian and let him nuzzle into the crook of his neck. Mickey wasn’t a big cuddler, wasn’t a cuddler at all, but Ian fit right around him, large and warm and the prefect size for a big spoon. Mickey kissed at his nose and forehead, waited for him to fall asleep.


	17. Chapter 17

Ian woke up to a murmured argument and cold skin. The covers were at his hips, barely covering his skin, and Mickey had left sometime in the middle of the night. He was vaguely aware that the voice in the hallway might have been Mickey’s, but the other one sounded like Gretchen, and she had no reason to argue with his roommate. Well, maybe a couple of reasons after last night, but no reason that she knew about.

            He opened his eyes to the empty room and rolled over onto his back. The blankness of the ceiling stared back at him, an empty canvas. He imagined painting stars into it, just for the hell of it.

            It didn’t take long for the stickiness of the sheets, his dried sweat, and the smell of sex to start getting to him. So he got up and grabbed a towel off the rack, not caring if it was his or Mickey’s, then opened the door into the hallway. And, sure enough, Mickey and Gretchen stood in the doorway to her room in the middle of an argument.

            “I know what I said, but I’m telling you I need to change my plans.”

            “And I’m telling you that you can’t,” Gretchen said. “It’s all set up, and...” She trailed off as she caught sight of Ian and Mickey turned around to look at him. His look was blank, betrayed nothing, and sent a shot of pain straight through Ian’s heart. Gretchen said, “Good morning.”

            “Morning,” Ian said. He looked between the two of them slowly. “What’s going on?”

            “We built a protocol around your roommate going home for the weekend,” Gretchen said. She glanced towards Mickey quickly before looking back at Ian in her calm, professional manner. “And now he tells us that he’s not going to leave.”

            “You can’t force him to leave,” Ian said. The part of him that had panicked at Mickey’s blank look calmed somewhat. Mickey wanted to stay with him. Mickey wanted to spend time with him. “Not if he doesn’t want to.”

            “It’s protocol,” Gretchen said, her voice hard.

            “Leave him alone,” Ian said. He patted Mickey on the back and squeezed his shoulder before stepping towards the showers. There was silence for a moment before the argument started again in earnest and he sighed. Being the President’s son was supposed to come with perks, not be met with total indifference.

            He stepped into the shower and turned the water on hot. The steam surrounded him and it relaxed his aching muscles. He moved the soap slowly over his body, remembered each of the bruises Mickey’s rough touch had pressed into his skin. He washed until he couldn’t feel Mickey anymore, until he felt clean again, and then stepped out into the bathroom with a towel wrapped around his waist. Mickey stood resting against the sink counter.

            “Hey,” Ian said. He stepped close and then thought better of it. Leaving a foot of space between them, he said, “Good sleep?”

            “You snore,” Mickey said, a hint of a smile on his lips.

            “Do not.”

            “Very quietly, but when you’re pressed up against my ear...” Mickey’s smile widened into a smirk but then he swallowed it, looked down at his feet. A hint of a blush showed on his cheeks and Ian’s heart sang at the fact that he could make such a rough and tumble guy blush. That was all for him. Mickey said, “About last night, you’re... okay, right?”

            “Fine.”

            “I just wanna be sure that I didn’t pressure you—”

            Ian laughed. Now he did close the last of the space between them and rested his hands on Mickey’s waist. Looking into his eyes at this distance felt dangerous, distracting, like drowning in an ocean that took away his ability to swim. “You pressure me?” Ian said. “I was pretty sure it was the other way around.”

            “Believe me, I felt no pressure,” Mickey said.

            “Good.” Ian kissed him once, twice, before Mickey pulled away. Ian stepped back quick, suddenly too aware that they were in a public place. _Three more years._ “So you’re okay?”

            “Pretty sure that’s my question.”

            “Let’s just say we’re both okay and move on?”

            After a slight hesitation, Mickey nodded. “Except... this weekend. Today.”

            “What about it?”

            “I’m supposed to go home,” Mickey said. He scratched the back of his neck and his eyes darted to the floor. “It was before... you know, what happened, and it’s all planned out with your security team and they’re fucking threatening to sue if it was all for nothing, so... I think I have to go.”

            Ian shook his head. He resisted the urge to pull Mickey closer, to speak right into his ear. The thought of losing him so soon chilled him right down to the bones. “I can talk to Gretch about it. She’ll be fine. Useless security protocol is never useless, after all, right? Can always be used another time.”

            “I have to go,” Mickey said, voice soft. He reached out to caress Ian’s cheek and dropped his hand down the length of his neck. “You get it, right? It’s got nothing to do with you, it’s just... bad timing.”

            “Really bad timing.”

            “I’ll be back Sunday night,” Mickey said. “And if anything happens or if you don’t feel right or if you wanna talk about anything that happened, you can call me, okay? Don’t hesitate to call me if you need me.”

            “Why would I need you?”

            “Your first time’s often harder than it should be,” Mickey said. “I would know.” He darted his eyes around the room and then stepped forward for a quick kiss. He grazed his thumb over Ian’s bottom lip. “If you need me, any reason, I’m a phone call away, okay?”

            “Okay.”

***

            Ian had never realized how much Mickey was his human shield until he was gone. There was something about him that became a wall between him and the world, a safety net if Gretchen and Paxton failed, and without it Ian felt exposed, unwatched, alone. So with the weekend upon them, he resolved to spend all his time in his room and only leave for meals. It felt wrong to go anywhere without Mickey.

            Then there was also the problem of all the new feelings inside of him. Sure, he’d imagined sex before, but now he had memories of it that invaded his waking hours. He could feel Mickey tightening around him, hear the other man’s rasping breath, and still smell what they had done in the room. If Gretchen or Paxton had noticed the smell, neither said a thing. Maybe they assumed that Mickey had had a girl in the room. It could have happened.

            Ian had never felt more like a child who had gotten away with something bad in his entire life. He had been on his best behaviour since the campaigns had started nearly thirteen years ago. He hadn’t gotten away with anything since he was six and even then it was a close call. And now he’d done the one thing he wasn’t supposed to do, share his secret and act on it. He felt like everyone who looked at him knew and he just wanted to scream at them to come out and face him.

            So he hid in his room for a day and a half waiting for someone to confront him. And when Paxton finally came in to sit on the bottom of his bed and said, “You miss Mickey?” Ian turned in his chair so fast he almost fell out of it.

            “What?” he said.

            “You’ve been quiet,” Paxton said. “Don’t get me wrong, security loves quiet, but it feels like something’s different since Mickey left.”

            “You my therapist now?”

            “Closest thing you have to a friend.”

            Ian tried to hide his wince because, unfortunately, Paxton was right. He hadn’t made any new friends on campus, hadn’t gotten close to anyone other than Mickey, despite the multiple parties he’d been to. Paxton was the closest thing he had to a friend. And there were things he couldn’t tell him, security concerns that Paxton wasn’t cleared for, and an odd professionalism between them that wasn’t going to go away any time soon. But that didn’t mean he wasn’t the only person Ian had to talk to.

            “If I tell you something,” Ian said, “can you promise to keep it a secret?”

            “Depends,” Paxton said. “Gretchen’s my superior and if it’s a security concern it has to go straight to her.”

            Ian shook his head. “It’s not.”

            “Then, yeah,” Paxton said. “I promise.”

            Ian swallowed, looked for the right words. He didn’t even really know what he wanted to tell Paxton, just that he couldn’t sit in his room in silence for much longer without completely flipping out. Maybe he needed real friends, someone who wasn’t his security to talk to.

            “I had sex,” Ian said.

            Paxton stared at him, frozen.

            So Ian went on. “I’m not sure how I feel about it or even... I don’t know, what happened or if it was good or anything, and I’m kind of freaking out.”

            Paxton stayed silent.

            “By all means, say nothing.”

            “Sorry,” Paxton managed. He swallowed hard and took off his glasses, polished them against the hem of his shirt. “I just... this is a huge security breach and I have no idea how it happened. That is, how it happened that we don’t know, and the implications for the future of your security detail and if you want to do it again and—”

            “Please calm down,” Ian said. He tried hard not to sigh, because he knew Paxton was there to help him. Or had been up until thirty seconds ago. “This is why I can’t tell you things.”

            Paxton managed a weak smile. “I’m sorry. You were safe?”

            “Yes.”

            “And you’re not...”

            “Pregnant?”

            He laughed. “I was going to say hurt.”

            Ian considered the question. Hurt seemed right for his feelings at the moment, but he knew that Mickey hadn’t left him on purpose, that Mickey had even tried to stay. So he had no right to be hurt by the situation, it was just bad timing on all their parts, and nothing could be done about that. “I just...” Ian began. He swallowed around his words and met Paxton’s eyes. “I don’t know how I’m supposed to feel about it.”

            “Everyone feels different.”

            “I feel like... I’m missing them. Like they’re not here so... I’m not here.”

            Paxton nodded. “Not completely uncalled for, as far as reactions go. I’d suggest you stay close to them if you feel that way.”

            “What if that’s impossible?”

            “Because of me and Gretch?”

            Ian nodded, even though that wasn’t completely true.

            “You know that we’re not here to report your sex life back to the President,” Paxton said. “As long as whoever you’re with doesn’t pose a security risk to your person, we have no reason to tell your father anything about them. Your life is completely your own.”

            Ian nodded.

            “Do you want to go see them now?”

            “I can’t.”

            “Why not?”

             “Went home for the weekend,” Ian said, even though it was dangerously close to revealing who he was talking about.

            Paxton seemed to take nothing from the statement though and simply patted Ian on the knee. He got up from his chair and said, “Maybe just get out of your room, then. Pack up your books and we’ll go to the library. Change of scenery might be nice.”

            Ian nodded and followed Paxton from the room.


	18. Chapter 18

Mickey arrived at the hotel a little after four o’clock on Saturday. The building was old stone, pre-WWII, and had gargoyles carved into the sides. The doors stood purple mahogany at the top of a large red staircase, the stone painted crimson. Behind them, a long red carpet spread out through the lobby. A dangling chandelier hung in five tiers, its diamonds almost dripping right to the floor. Antique couches and chairs clustered around fireplaces near the door and then spread out in small seating arrangements down the length of the hall towards the main staircase which rose like the entrance to a ballroom at the back of the building. To the sides, two long mahogany desks waited to check in guests, the whole building quiet, complete, neat, everything Mickey was not.

            He’d made a good call by changing into one of his work suits before coming; the lobby was filled with business people in suits and rich people dripping in jewelry. His cheap suit didn’t quite fit in, but to the untrained eye he could be one of them.

            Mandy came out from the back to greet him and immediately jumped into his arms. Her grip was tight, bruising, but she didn’t let go for a long moment. When she stepped back, there were happy tears in her eyes. “Look at you all dressed up,” she said. “I never thought I’d see the day where you’d walk in here in a suit.” She pulled at his lapels.

            “What’d you expect? A semi-automatic?”

            “Something like that.” She winked, smiled, and took his hand. She pulled him behind one of the two long desks and they walked into the employees-only section of the hotel. Back here, the decor immediately faded, like stepping from The Four Seasons into The Shining. The walls and the floors were concrete with a fine layer of dust covering all of it. They ducked around metal shelving units and abandoned laundry carts until they got to a rickety elevator that gleamed in the dull space.

            “You like it here?” Mickey asked.

            “Best hotel in the city,” Mandy said. “And it’s mine. You like working at the White House?”

            “Not at the White House.”

            “Oooooh, special detail?”

            They stepped into the elevator and Mandy hit the top floor button, leaned back against the metal railing. The elevator was lined with blue padding which rustled when her weight settled back against it.

            “President’s son,” Mickey said.

            Mandy let out a low whistle. “He’s hot. Hear he’s a handful though.”

            “Bit of a lightweight and a handsy drunk,” Mickey said. “Other than that though—”

            “Wait,” Mandy said. Her blue eyes sparkled when they turned on him, a grin spreading across her thin lips and cracking them wide-open white. “Handsy? Are you telling me that you got _handsy_ with the President’s son?”

            “Don’t you wanna wait until we’re at the room for gossip?”

            Mandy huffed and shook her head. The elevator rattled to a stop and they stepped off. Two turns and Mandy stopped in front of a door to pull out her key card. The door beeped and let them into a large penthouse suite complete with a Victorian age sitting room, two bedrooms and two master baths. Mandy turned in a circle, her arms spread out, and then flopped down onto one of the cream couches without ceremony.

            “Some rich guy keeps this for his mistress, but she’s out of town for two weeks on ‘business.’” Mandy’s air quotes said all she needed to about that. “So it’s yours for the weekend, mine until next Wednesday.”

            Mickey flicked a deep purple calla lily and dropped his bags. “Nice.”

            “So, the President’s son.”

            “Ian.”

            “Ian,” she repeated, trying out the name on her tongue. Then she shrugged. “You call him Ian?”

            “I’m undercover.”

            “Shut up. Like in a movie?”

            Mickey winced. “Just because you’re around rich teens all the time now, doesn’t mean you have to talk like them.”

            Mandy wrinkled her nose and threw a pillow at him. “Fuck off. Get back to the handsy part.”

            With a sigh, Mickey took a seat across from Mandy and put his feet up on the glass coffee table. It rattled under the weight of him, but he ignored the sound, sunk deeper into the cloud-like cushions. He almost made a relaxed sound before his training kicked in and he stayed silent, even though he didn’t need to be on alert while he was on break.

            “I booked this time off in order to get away from him because he was driving me crazy.”

            “Sexually?”

            Mickey rolled his eyes and nodded. “But then we had sex.”

            “You had sex with the President’s son?”

            “Say it a little louder, I’m sure there are aliens on Mars that didn’t hear you.”

            Mandy waved a hand. “The walls are soundproof. Aren’t you going to get fired?”

            “If he tells anyone.”

            “And you don’t think he will?”

            “He’s not out,” Mickey said. “This is high security stuff, higher clearance than I technically have. Only a handful of people even know he’s gay and no one can know until after the President’s second term is a lock. And even then... I don’t want to know what might happen if it comes out while he’s still in the White House.”

            “Couldn’t be worse than coming out in the Southside.”

            “Could be,” Mickey said. “It’s the White House. He gets enough death threats that I’m briefed on every day without adding his sexuality to the mix.”

            Mandy was silent for a long moment. “Should you have slept with him then? If he’s not out and you’re technically his security...”

            “I didn’t come here for you to tell me it was a bad idea.”

            “Technically you did, if you planned to come before this happened.”

            “Fuck off.”

            Mandy shrugged. “I’m just wondering if you actually thought this through. He’s gonna wanna fuck you, and you’re gonna need to do your job, and eventually he’s gonna figure it out. Unless he’s a complete idiot and then we have another problem on our hands which is you can’t let stupid people down easy and he’s the President’s son.”

            “I’ll tell him before it gets too far.”

            “It’s already gone too far,” Mandy said. “You’re having sex with the President’s son.”

            “Can you please call him Ian?”

            “I’ll call him Ian when his name is more important to the situation than his position,” Mandy snapped. “You’re jeopardizing your whole career, everything you’ve worked for, and for what? How well do you even know the guy? How long have you been on his detail?”

            “A month and a bit,” Mickey said.

            “And you’ll give it all up, everything you worked for, for a month and a bit?” Mandy said. “I know we’ve never been... we’re not good people. We don’t come from a good place, Mick. But we’ve always been a little better than where we come from and we’ve always wanted out and we got it. And what are you gonna do when this blows up in your face and you’ve gotta start all over again? Do you have the strength to get out again? The strength to try it all again? Because I know I don’t. If they kicked me out of here now, I’d just crawl back to dad because I can’t do it again. Can you?”

             “Please don’t cry,” Mickey said, his voice soft. He wished he hadn’t chosen to sit away from his sister, because now all he wanted to do was wrap an arm around her. “I’m strong enough to do it again, okay? I’d do it a hundred times again if I knew it meant you being out too, okay? Don’t worry about me.”

            “You’re gonna blow it.”

            “I know.”

            “You’re such a fucking idiot.” Mandy stood up and wiped the tears from her eyes. “I have to get back to work. Make yourself at home. I suggest you take the bedroom on the right. They usually fuck in the one on the left and don’t like us changing the sheets.”

            Mickey nodded and watched his sister leave. Then he fell back into the couch with a sigh. He knew she was right – she was rarely wrong – but he didn’t know what to do about it. He was fucking screwed.


	19. Chapter 19

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm so sorry I haven't replied to all your lovely comments! They make me so happy and thank you so much for commenting!! I promise I'll get better at replying!

Ian walked into his room Sunday night to see Mickey sprawled out on the bed, arm over his eyes. Ian immediately shut the door in Gretchen’s face and rushed over to the bed. Jumping onto the mattress, he straddled Mickey’s waist and kissed his lips. Then he worked his kisses down the side of the other man’s neck and Mickey moaned, dropped his hand from his eyes to the back of Ian’s head.

            “Hello to you too,” Mickey said.

            “Missed you,” Ian said.

            “I heard.” Mickey pulled Ian’s hair and brought him back for a crushing kiss. He opened his eyes and for a moment Ian got lost in the perfect blue. “You okay after everything? I know it was a fucking shitty time to leave, but I had to.”

            “How was it? Your family and all?”

            “Only my sister,” Mickey said. “She’s doing good. Got the hotel running smoothly and all that shit, getting bribed under the table to keep business men’s mistresses safe.”

            “Sounds like she’s got it made.”

            “That’s my sister. You can take the girl out of the Southside, but you can’t take the Southside out of the girl.” He was silent as Ian kissed him again and then said, “But you didn’t answer my question. About being okay.”

            “I’m good,” Ian said. He pressed kisses to Mickey’s nose and cheeks, darted down to his lips for a quick peck. “It’s been... hard, I guess. Talked to Pax for a bit—”

            “You talked to Pax?”

            “Yeah, he hasn’t got the clearance but—”

            “He could’ve fuckin’ outed us at any time,” Mickey snapped. He tried to sit up but Ian held him down. He got an annoyed look, but nothing else as Mickey settled back into the pillows. “You really trust your guard that much? It ain’t hard to turn someone for a pay cheque. The Southside teaches you that better than anywhere.”

            “All right, tough guy,” Ian said. He forced Mickey into a deeper kiss, licked at his lips until he opened up and let his tongue slide inside. After a long moment, he pulled back. “Pax has been with me for years. I trust him with my life, you really think I can’t trust him with my secrets?”

            “Your life and your secrets have very different prices.”

            “Just shut up and kiss me.”

            Ian was surprised that those words worked on Mickey, that the other man let him deepen their kiss and play their tongues together. He ran his fingers down the length of Mickey’s arms and intertwined their fingers. Gently, he pulled up Mickey’s arms and pressed them down over his head. Mickey mumbled into his lips, but whatever he said couldn’t have been too important when a second later he bucked his hips up against Ian’s, grinded against him for a moment.

            “Impatient,” Ian murmured. He shifted his hands so one of his gripped both of Mickey’s and he could use the others to slam Mickey’s hips back into the mattress. He felt Mickey smile under his kisses, murmur something about Ian thinking he was “so tough.”

            Ian ground down on Mickey and let friction be his response to that comment. Mickey moaned under his ministrations, let out small whimpers as Ian whispered kisses down the side of his neck. Even small touches of Ian’s fingers under the waistband of his boxers could make Mickey try to buck his hips, until he learned that was a good way to get the touch taken away.

            “You know,” Mickey said while Ian had his tongue swirling one of Mickey’s nipples, “for a horny teenager, you sure know how to make a guy wait for it.”

            “Is it bothering you?” Ian asked. He palmed at Mickey through his jeans, felt the muscles in Mickey’s body scream with the effort to keep his hips down. Mickey was hard in his hand, a wet spot formed at the front of his boxers. “I could make it go by quicker.” He dipped his hand under the thin cotton and started to jack Mickey off quickly.

            Mickey bit down on his bottom lip hard enough to draw blood. The crimson dots spotted across his lip. “Fuck,” he said. “Fuck, Ian. Stop. I want...”

            “What do you want?”

            “I want you inside me,” he huffed out. “Not... not like this.”

            “Hmm.” Ian drew out the sound, moved his fingers just a little slower, but not enough to stop it from being a feat for Mickey to stay hard. Ian almost wanted to see how far he could go, how long Mickey could hold it in with his hand moving so fast, but he acquiesced when a thumb over the head made Mickey’s moans reverberate off the walls. “Okay.”

            He leaned down to kiss Mickey and then started to remove his pants. As he did so, Mickey pushed his own pants down, kicked them off, and then spread his legs wide. He grabbed a pillow from behind him and raised his hips up on it.

            “Lube,” Ian said, breathless as their cocks touched.

            “Bedside table.”

            Ian grabbed for it and dipped his fingers into the goop. He rubbed it between his fingers to warm it, then gently pressed one finger into Mickey. Mickey canted his hips up into the pressure, let out a groan around the word, “Another.”

            Ian complied, made quick work of stretching the tight ring of muscle. Mickey fell apart under his hands, begging for more, for Ian to just get in, but Ian continued to take his time. The sweaty hairs that fell into Mickey’s eyes stuck to his forehead and sweat stuck the cotton of his shirt to his chest. Ian wanted to take it all off, but he knew Mickey didn’t have the patience for that, not now, and no matter how confident he was feeling, he knew if he pushed it too far that Mickey could easily kill him before either Gretchen or Paxton got into the room.

            So he slipped out his three fingers and rubbed the excess lube around the length of his dick. He let out a small groan at the touch, had forgotten how badly he needed friction while he had listened to Mickey whine. He coated himself well before lining up with Mickey’s hole, pressing in slowly and then bottoming out to stay there for a moment.

            “Move,” Mickey said.

            “Another minute.”

            “Move.”

            “How fast do you want this to be over?”

            Mickey hooked his leg around Ian’s hip and moved him impossibly closer. The groan he let out was wild, impatient, and he managed the words, “Who’s been being tortured here? If I can keep it together, so can you.”

            Ian wanted to disagree, argue that Mickey had more experience with this kind of thing, but he didn’t. Those teasing blue eyes left little to the imagination and he knew that once he started moving Mickey would start squeezing and everything would be downhill from there. So he pulled out slow and slammed back in, held onto Mickey’s hips to keep him in place. Mickey groaned and started to speak again, little swears and Ian’s name and begging pleases. Ian tried to wipe the smile off his face but found that he couldn’t quite do it as he thrust into Mickey again and again.

            The delicious smack of their hips filled the room and Ian leaned down to kiss Mickey on the lips. He deepened the kiss to tongues, languished in the feel of their kiss, wet and unmatched, and slowed his pace. He let small thrusts move into Mickey, who protested the change of pace with a small sound, but Ian cut him off with another kiss.

            Mickey struggled under him for a second, tried to fuck himself down onto Ian, but got stilled with a hand on his hip. Mickey whimpered. Ian kissed him gently, spread his kisses over his jaw line and whispered sweet nothings into his ear to calm him. He pressed his hand between them to rub Mickey’s dick, just enough to give him some extra friction as he slowed his thrusts.

            “Fuck you,” Mickey said.

            “Maybe later,” Ian said. And he sped up again, just to hear Mickey scream. Mickey tightened his ass around him with every thrust, rode out his own orgasm in near silence and then let Ian slam through into his.

            “You did better,” Mickey said.

            “It’s why I made you wait.”

            Mickey almost laughed, the smile stuck in his throat, and he looked up at Ian with bright eyes. Ian’s heart skipped a beat in that moment, but he swallowed it down. He kissed Mickey slow and rolled off of him, let their shirts rub together as he placed slow kisses across Mickey’s face.

            “I missed you,” Ian said. “A lot.”

            “Same.”

            “Really?”

            Mickey nodded, their noses brushing together. “I knew it couldn’t have been easy for you, me leaving you behind after your first time, and I couldn’t stop thinking about you the whole time I was away. I need to know you’re actually all right and not just saying it to get me off your fucking back.”

            “I wasn’t,” Ian said, soft. “But then I started to do some things and get on with my life and I realized it wasn’t such a big deal to have you gone. You were always going to come back, right?”

            “Right.”

            Ian went back to slow kisses and let the laziness of the motion overtake him. Eventually the two slipped beneath the covers and Mickey nuzzled into the crook of Ian’s neck. The two fell asleep not long after.


	20. Chapter 20

Mickey convinced himself, somehow, that being with Ian was better for his mission. They were inseparable. He no longer felt like a stalker when he showed up after one of Ian’s classes or kept by his side when he went to the library. Everything felt natural, free, like two college kids in the honeymoon phase who couldn’t let go of each other.

            Of course, they had to let go of each other, and that’s how Mickey stayed on task. He couldn’t spend too long looking at Ian or someone would figure it out. So he had to look around, stay alert, find the threats and neutralize them before anything happened to Ian. Being close with Ian was working, kissing Ian was working, fucking Ian was working better than any other plan he’d come up with.

            However, there was a gnawing feeling in his stomach whenever he had to pull away to do this or that for Gretchen. She looked at him too hard when he walked away. He had too hard of a time walking away. He was sure he had read somewhere that being in love with the protectee helped the protector, but he wasn’t so sure. Getting lost in Ian’s eyes was a real risk, a risk that put him in danger, and he wasn’t even in love. He just liked to sleep with the guy and yet he found himself distracted by Ian’s every smallest movement, by Ian’s tiniest habits.

            He was in the middle of watching Ian write down a line of Shakespeare’s poetry, watching his fingers twirl around a ball point pen, when he got nudged in the ribs. Ian was smiling at him, staring even, his green eyes bright with laughter. “Do your work,” he whispered, the giggle barely out of his voice.

            Mickey smiled. How could he not smile when Ian looked at him like that? “Fuck off,” he said and aimed a kick at Ian under the table. Ian caught his foot, quickly tangled their legs together, and Mickey’s aggression became an uneasy game of footsie. He broke out of it with a laugh and said, “Do your work.”

            “I’ll do work when you do work.”

            “I’m failing anyways,” Mickey said. A lie, when he didn’t actually have to do any of the work, but an easily believed lie since he never handed anything in.

            “Maybe I can tutor you,” Ian offered.

            “I’d like to see you try.”

            “For starters,” Ian said, reaching over to open Mickey’s notebook, “you should actually take notes while reading the plays. It’ll help you remember them later.”

            “What makes you think I’ve been reading the plays?”

            “You’ve had _Othello_ open for the last thirty minutes.”

            Mickey was stumped on that one. Sure, he’d been skimming it in between looking at Ian and looking around the library to make sure no one was staring, but he hadn’t been _reading_ it. It was Shakespeare for crying out loud. The biggest threat that the government could come up with against Ian was an old English dead guy. Mickey didn’t need to read his plays to figure out which assholes in the class were most likely to take shots at Ian.

            “Whatever,” Mickey said.

            Ian smiled. “You’re just a big ol’ Shakespeare fan at heart.”

            “Shut up.”

            “Make me.”

            Mickey leaned forward, got within an inch of Ian’s face before he stopped himself, heart beating hard in his chest. He licked his lips and forced himself to back off. “Maybe later,” he said.

            “Definitely later,” Ian said.

            Mickey shook his head, a smile on his face. His whole body thrummed with the promise of the words and it took a lot of his willpower not to pull Ian out of the library right then and there. He had to force himself to stay still, to scan more of _Othello_ and to wait for Ian to be ready to leave.

            And three hours later, when Ian had finally exhausted his Shakespeare-loving brain, they headed back to the dorms. Mickey lay a hand on Ian’s hip as he went to unlock the door, a simple touch hidden by the curve in the hallway, and felt Ian relax back into him as he turned the key. Excitement churned in Mickey’s belly until he heard a throat clear behind him.

            He turned to see Gretchen standing in the door to her room and he dropped his hand. She said, “If you’ll excuse us, for a moment, Ian. We have some information for Mickey.”

            Ian gave her a look. “Information you won’t give me?”

            “It’s personal,” Paxton said. “About his family. If you need to be briefed on it, you will be.”

            Ian shrugged, shot Mickey an apologetic look. Mickey stepped back from him, his blood going cold, and waited for the door to close before he walked into Gretchen and Paxton’s room. He refused to sit down. Instead he stood in the middle of the room with his arms crossed, waiting for the first blow to rain down.

            “What the hell do you think you’re doing?” Gretchen snapped. “Have you completely lost your mind?”

            “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Mickey said.

            “Drop the act. Ian practically told Paxton what happened between the two of you. And if he hadn’t? You haven’t been doing your fucking job because you’ve been mooning over your boyfriend.”

            “I’ve done my job just fine,” Mickey said. “Better, even.”

            “Really?” Gretchen said. She stepped in front of Mickey, her grey eyes lightning and thunder. “Tell me then, what’s the last threat that we were told to watch out for?”

            “Paparazzi on campus.”

            “Why?”

            “His dad’s introducing a new bill that won’t require college students to pay taxes on earnings during the school year,” Mickey said. “People think that this has to do with Ian, so he’ll be a target for the media.”

            Gretchen pursed her lips. “Fine. Tell me three suspicious things you saw in the library today.”

            “Guy with a red backpack, girl with the lace dress, and three boys with shaved heads.”

            “Good.”

            “Are we done?”

            “Are we done?” Gretchen repeated. “Just because you’ve proven you’re not completely incompetent doesn’t mean that you are not screwing the President’s son! Do you have any idea how much trouble you’re in? How much trouble we’re all in?”

            “Only if you tell the President,” Mickey said.

            “How could I not tell the President?”

            “Like this.” Mickey stood there, did nothing.

            Gretchen sighed. “You’re impossible.”

            “Thank you.”

            “Let’s think about this logically,” Paxton said. He got up from his perch on the bed and walked over to where the other two stood. “There’s nothing we can do about this. If we push Mickey away, it’ll be suspicious and it’ll make Ian more reckless. If we pull Mickey out, Ian will be suspicious. There’s nothing we can do without tipping Ian off.”

            “We can kill him,” Gretchen suggested.

            Paxton offered a thin smile. “This isn’t an ideal situation and, if it ever gets back to the President, we’re all fired.”

            “We’ll be fired anyways when Mickey gets him killed because he can’t think with his brain while he’s thinking with his dick,” Gretchen said. “Have you seen him at all lately? He’s been completely incompetent as security.”

            “He’s been less than effective, but—”

            “Less than effective? He didn’t even move when the girl with the selfie stick came up to them.”

            “She was a sorority girl with a dare,” Mickey said. “Give it a break.”

            “Give it a break? That’s your reaction to security concerns? What if it had been a rifle instead of a selfie stick?”

            “How’d someone get a rifle into the library?”

            “This is unprofessional and impossible and I have half a mind to report you to the President right this instant.”

            “But you won’t,” Mickey said. “Neither of you want to lose your jobs over this or admit that it took you this long to figure it out. The President doesn’t want the mission to go sideways. If this gets out, the mission goes overboard fast. So if you want to continue to yell at me, go ahead, but the longer you do the more time Ian has to wonder what the fuck we’re talking about in here and come to the conclusion that we’ve got nothing the fuck to talk about.”

            Gretchen shook her head, a feral smile edging at her lips. “You’re so smug.”

            “You’re not going to do anything.”

            “Your logic is, what? We’re going to get fired whether the President’s son dies because of you or not, so we might as well let him die?”

            “He’s not gonna fucking die!”

            “He could! You’re not doing your fucking job,” Gretchen said. She stepped up to Mickey and got a hair’s breadth from his face. “And you are the close guard on this, you are the one on point, so don’t tell me that it’s okay if you’re a little distracted by what’s going on in your pants, because it’s not.” She took a breath and stepped back. “You’re right when you say I don’t want to get fired over this. You’re right when you say the President wants this to be a success. But you’re wrong if you don’t think this whole thing is going to blow up right in your face. In all our faces. And I have a right to yell at you for ever letting this happen.”

            Mickey nodded. “Now what’s the bullshit story about why I’m in here?”

            “Your father sent a death threat to the President.”

            Mickey almost laughed, stopped himself. “Did that really happen?”

            “Not yet,” Paxton said. “But we have bets on when it will happen.”

            Mickey shook his head and went for the door. Right before he turned the handle, he looked back at the other two agents and said, “I am sorry. I shouldn’t have let it go this far.”

            “Just don’t hurt him,” Gretchen said. “It’s your job to protect him, nothing else.”

            “I know,” Mickey said. Then he was out in the hall, trapped between the two rooms. His superiors at his back, Gretchen’s voice loud again as soon as the door shut, and Ian in front of him, the quiet of his room already feeling like a safe haven. But Mickey forced himself to look around, to find the weaknesses in the hallway before he moved. He had to stay on his game. If he did nothing else right, he had to stay on his game.


	21. Chapter 21

Ian sat at his desk making notes in a Shakespeare play. He’d turned the clock upside down a few hours ago, not willing to face the reality of what time it was. Despite it all, he didn’t feel tired. Shakespeare had finally started to make sense and he’d be damned if he’d let it all slip away because of a little thing like three a.m.

            Behind him, Mickey’s steady breathing faltered and a moment later the familiar creak of the bed echoed between the walls. Ian didn’t turn around, kept his eyes on the page, as Mickey muttered, “What the fuck are you doing up?”

            “Shakespeare.”

            “More of an afternoon activity, isn’t it?”

            “Can’t sleep,” Ian said, not that he’d tried. But he knew that if he had tried it would have been a lost cause. Between becoming used to Mickey’s weight beside him and the unnatural energy buzzing through him, he knew that sleep was further away than England. “Plus there’s a test tomorrow.”

            “Test is Wednesday.”

            Ian glanced over his shoulder, a soft smile on his lips as he looked at his boyfriend. Boyfriend. The word felt strange in his mind, since he had never been able to use it for anyone before, but it felt right when he met Mickey’s bleary blue eyes. “Tomorrow is Wednesday,” Ian said.

            “Fuck.”

            “Want me to help you study?”

            “At fucking three in the morning?” Mickey scoffed. “Come to bed.”

            “Few more minutes. Go back to sleep.”

            The bed creaked some more and when Ian looked back over his shoulder, Mickey was sitting upright rubbing his eyes. He managed a smile through his tiredness and said, “I’ll make it worth your while.”

            “Will you?”

            “Yeah, come ‘ere.”

            Ian shifted back from the desk and walked over to Mickey. He cupped his boyfriend’s chin in his hands and kissed him lightly, slowly pressing deeper into the kiss as sleepy lips started to respond. Mickey pulled him until he shifted to straddle Mickey on the bed, lazy kisses mixing the intense with the sweet, lips smacked together and then pulled apart for quick pecks on the cheeks, temples, and foreheads. Mickey yawned when Ian pecked his nose and Ian laughed.

            “Maybe I should let you sleep,” Ian said.

            “Stay.”

            “You’ll fall asleep.”

            “Tell me something,” Mickey said, his words mumbled into Ian’s lips.

            “What?”

            “Anything. What do you want to tell me?”

            Ian considered it, let his brain sink into the kisses before he pulled back long enough to whisper, “My mom, Monica. Tried to kill herself a couple of times.”

            “It was all over the news.”

            “News thought she wanted attention,” Ian said. “Didn’t know she was sick. Still is. Refuses to take her meds.” Ian sighed into the next kiss and then pulled back, his body suddenly tired. He met Mickey’s blue eyes and said, “She’s bipolar.”

            The news didn’t seem to phase Mickey who simply said, “Bi-what?”

            “Polar. She swings from extreme highs to extreme lows and when she’s low, she tries to kill herself.”

            Mickey nodded, his expression solemn. He licked his lips and said, slowly, “Is it... genetic?”

            “Yeah.”

            “How long have you been up, Ian?”

            “Sixteen hours.” Ian looked away as he said the words, focused on the heavy metal rock band poster Mickey had on his wall. Their hair was atrocious, spiked up in huge afros and their clothes were ripped leather, exposing far too much skin. “I’m not tired.”

            “Hey,” Mickey said. A hand on Ian’s cheek, he turned his head so that the two were looking at each other again. Mickey’s expression was solid, sweet. “No worries. Just come to bed. Let’s go to sleep.”

            “Yeah,” Ian said. “Of course.”

            Mickey shifted over in the bed to give Ian room and Ian shuffled underneath the covers. He easily brought Mickey into his arms, kissed his hairline as he steadied his breathing, forced it to match the pace of Mickey’s. Less than a minute with his eyes closed and Mickey was fast asleep, deep breaths tickling across Ian’s chest.

            Ian couldn’t even bring himself to close his eyes. Even slightly closed, they flickered back open, demanded stimulation. A sick feeling tumbled in his stomach over how quickly Mickey had associated him with Monica. What else had he done that could be seen as sick? Other than tonight, what had he done that made him like her?

            Those thoughts kept him up for the rest of the night until light streamed in through the windows and the alarm went off. Mickey grumbled and shifted further into the crook of Ian’s neck. He laid light, ticklish kisses there, and Ian responded in kind, feathering his lips across Mickey’s forehead. But in his head, he kept thinking of all the things he could have done that related back to bipolar disorder and absently he wondered if he needed to go see a doctor.


	22. Chapter 22

Mickey stared at Ian as he talked to some guys outside of his psychology class. It was nice to just watch him, to see him happy, laughing. For once, he didn’t seem worried about his status or how he looked to the people he was talking to. Mickey had to pull his eyes off of him to check for threats and, if he did it less than he should have, he reminded himself that the worst threat at the moment was a little bit of paparazzi.

            Ian caught his eyes as the group dispersed and a wide smile spread across his lips. He walked over to Mickey, kept his pace light, and stopped just short of an intimate distance. “You have no idea how much I want to kiss you right now,” Ian whispered, eyes alight with mischief.

            Mickey felt himself smile back. He felt giddy, like a child who didn’t know how much pain there was in the world. Ian made him feel like he was having his first crush all over again – except without the debilitating fear that his father would find out who that crush was on.

            “Psychology make you hot?” Mickey said.

            “Sexuality chapter,” Ian said. He smoothed down the collar of Mickey’s t-shirt, let his fingers linger just a little too long. “It’s enough to get me going.”

            “You’re easy these days.”

            “What’s that supposed to mean?”

            Mickey frowned at the bite in Ian’s tone and shrugged. “Nothing, man.” He glanced over his shoulder, half to make sure no one was listening, half to check his six. Paxton had to be around somewhere, but Mickey hadn’t spotted him since Ian left class. “You wanna go to the library?”

            “Not the dorm?”

            Mickey shrugged. “Library’s closer. There’s gotta be some dusty stacks somewhere.”

            Ian’s smile faltered, but came back on quickly. He nodded and gestured for Mickey to lead the way. Mickey did so, checking back every so often to make sure Ian stayed close and to look for Paxton or Gretchen. Neither of them seemed to be close by. He wondered if they had noticed him while Ian was with the group and decided to do some perimeter checks without telling him. He checked his phone. Nothing.

            Ian nudged him as they walked. “Something more interesting than me?” he asked.

            Mickey smirked. “Only everything.”

            Ian shoved him harder and Mickey shoved back, nearly pushed Ian into a group of girls walking the other way. They giggled at the sight of him, but were too nervous to say much of anything. Mickey took Ian by the elbow and guided him through the library doors. He did a quick assessment of the first floor – no one had even looked their way – and then headed for the stairs.

            He got to the first floor and pushed through the doors. Part of him still trembled at the thought that Gretchen and Paxton were nowhere to be found, but he shook it off when Ian slipped a hand into his back pocket. If the two hadn’t backed off already, they would definitely back off now.

            Mickey made sure they were far in the stacks before he turned around to kiss Ian. The grip on his ass tightened, massaged, and Mickey was quickly a moaning mess under Ian’s tongue. For a guy who had never done anything, Ian was a fast learner. A very fast learner.

            “Fuck,” Mickey murmured while Ian trailed kisses down the length of his neck. He let his fingers tangle in the back of Ian’s red hair, pulled a little when Ian bit down on his pulse point.

            Mickey pushed Ian back into the shelves and grinded down against him. He could feel Ian lose his breath against his throat, the smile that turned to a genuine sound of pleasure, his dick twitching. Mickey spread his hands across Ian’s chest. Their lips met again with wild imprecision and Mickey had to lick his way back into Ian’s mouth.

            He had a hand on the button of Ian’s jeans when he heard the sound. A nearly imperceptible click. Then another. He turned his head towards the hall, not sure what he was hearing, and spotted the camera. A real, professional camera, not some eight hundred dollar phone carried by a college kid.

            “Fuck,” Mickey said.

            Ian pulled at him, but Mickey pushed him off. With no regard for his appearance, he stalked towards the camera man who turned tail and ran. Mickey took off in hot pursuit, his breath in his throat, breathing hard. There were a lot of turns in the library and it was hard to check every stack to make sure he didn’t miss the camera man in one of them. He turned onto the stairs and saw the man going down. He took two steps and then leaped onto the man’s back.

            Mickey heard the camera crash before he heard the man’s groans of pain. He turned the guy over, looked at the mess of his bloody nose and his mangled arm. The camera was in pieces but for good measure Mickey took out the SD card and stomped on it. He felt battered from the fall, but had no obvious broken bones himself. His wrist felt a little tender when he twirled it, but it was no worse than a sprain.

            “You saw nothing,” Mickey said. He got to his feet and offered the cameraman a hand. “Not a thing.”

            The man gave him a sideways look, then smirked. “What’s the information worth to you?”

            “How much do you want?” Mickey said.

            “Price of the picture would’ve been four, five hundred. Plus damages, of course.” The man winced to prove his point as he moved his broken arm to wipe the blood off his face. “And the camera. That’s damn expensive.”

            “I’ll give you a thousand, flat.”

            Mickey winced at the sound of the voice. He’d left Ian unprotected upstairs, but apparently he’d caught up with them. He stopped beside Mickey and pulled his wallet from his pocket.

            “That work for you?” Ian asked.

            The man nodded.

            Ian handed over the cash. Why on earth he carried around a thousand dollars in small bills was beyond Mickey, but most things rich people did were. He let it go and both of them watched the man scamper off.

            “That was close,” Ian said.

            “You’ve got not idea.”

            “Think the blood gives me an idea.” Ian turned to face Mickey and checked him for wounds. “He got the worst of it?”

            Mickey nodded. “Come on,” he said. “We should get back to the dorm. Tell Gretchen and Paxton what happened.”

            Ian shrugged. “No reason to worry them.”

            “That was professional paparazzi, Ian,” Mickey said. “If I hadn’t heard that click, if he had taken the picture from further away... we’d be fucked.”

            “It’s just one camera guy.”

            “Your top threat right now is one camera guy,” Mickey said. “We can’t not tell your security that there’s paparazzi on campus and they’ve been able to catch you doing... things that you shouldn’t be doing. They need to tighten up.”

            “I don’t want them to tighten up.”

            “Well, too bad. They need to. Especially now.”

            Ian huffed and crossed his arms. “What? Especially now that we’re fucking? We could’ve just gone back to the dorms like I suggested, but that was too far for someone.”

            “Fuck off,” Mickey said. “I’m trying to keep you safe.”

            “You weren’t all that concerned twenty minutes ago.”

            “Twenty minutes ago I was horny and thought Pax was on our tail,” Mickey snapped. He did a quick glance around the stairway to make sure no one was around to listen to them. Even though it was empty, he lowered his voice. “You know that the paparazzi’s been threatening to be all over campus because of this new bill. If one of them got through, who knows how many others might? And who knows what other compromising positions they could find you in? You’re not exactly a saint.”

            “Fuck you.”

            “It’s true.”

            Ian shook his head and took a step back. “How about you go talk to a fucking doctor about whatever injuries you have and I’ll see you back at the dorm room?”

            “We’re going to talk to Gretchen.”

            “We’re not.” Ian turned away and started down the stairs.

            Mickey considered calling after him, but refused to part with that much of his dignity. Instead he followed at a safe distance and pulled out his phone to call Gretchen. She answered on the third ring and Mickey quickly went over the events of the day, doing his best to leave out exactly what the photographer had walked in on.

            Gretchen said, “I’ll call in a couple more plain clothes. Where’s Pax?”

            “Fuck if I know.”

            Gretchen swore. “I’ll take care of it.”

            Mickey hung up and tailed Ian back to the dorm room. Once he was sure he was safely inside and Gretchen was across the hall, he went outside to light a cigarette.


	23. Chapter 23

Ian spent most of the next day mad at Mickey and he wasn’t really sure why. It was perfectly reasonable to suggest more security and talking to Gretchen, but he didn’t feel like being reasonable. More security sounded like a good way to get trapped. And trapped wasn’t what he wanted to feel right now.

            He couldn’t sleep that night or the next. He got a few hours here and there, but otherwise wasted time showering at odd hours, going for runs as the sun came up, and reading more Shakespeare than was necessarily healthy.

            On his third day of barely speaking to Mickey past what he needed to communicate to be able to live with him, Ian went down to the free clinic on campus. He whispered as best he could to the nurse, but he could feel everyone in the room looking his way. He refused to say why he was there and took a seat, flipped through a couple of magazines while he waited.

            He wished, ridiculously, that Mickey was there with him. To hold his hand. Even though he knew that was impossible, Mickey’s steady presence would have been better than Gretchen’s. Gretchen stood behind his seat and glared at anyone who looked his way. At least Mickey would have sat by his side and nudged his elbow if he looked too nervous.

            Ian took a deep breath. It was hours before he was called and in that time he did very little of his homework. Then he walked into the room with the doctor and waited through Gretchen’s speech about confidentiality. The doctor answered in a satisfactory manner and then asked Ian what was wrong.

            “I think I’m bipolar,” Ian said.

            The doctor blinked. “Excuse me?”

            “My mom, my biological mom, has bipolar disorder. And I’ve been staying up very late, getting little sleep, I’m annoyed for no reason, and have too much energy. I haven’t crashed yet, but I feel like I’m waiting for it.” Ian got all the words out in one breath. “Can you help me?”

            “Well,” the doctor began. Gretchen glared at him and he cleared his throat. “Are you interested in medication?”

            Ian wondered how easy it would be to find out about medication. There would be records, pills on his bedside table, and any number of people who could see him filling the prescription. He shook his head.

            “The other option is therapy,” the doctor said. “But therapy alone is usually ineffective with bipolar disorder. I would recommend both.”

            “Both?”

            “Yes. I assume you can afford it?”

            “That’s not the issue,” Ian said. He almost smiled, but stopped himself. “I’m just worried about the image of it. For the next election.”

            “Mental illness is nothing to be ashamed of.”

            “Tell that to the American people.”

            The doctor pursed his lips. “Your family has overcome a lot to become the First family. There was no shortage of scandal in your father’s Presidential run. If this gets out, which it shouldn’t based on confidentiality laws, I have no doubt that your father’s Presidency could survive it. It’s survived worse.”

            “I’m worried this would be the last straw.”

            “What’s more important? Your father’s career or your health?”

            Ian was silent.

            The doctor turned to his desk and wrote out a prescription on a pad of paper. He held it out to Ian. “Both your answer and your father’s should be your health,” he said. “Try this medication for a month and then come back to see me again. We’ll adjust based on what happens and if you need to see me before then, come right in and ask for me.”

            Ian nodded but hesitated in taking the paper. When he finally did, he crumpled it in his palm. Then he left the office without another word. The click-clack of Gretchen’s heels behind him was oddly comforting as he made his way back to the dorm.


	24. Chapter 24

Mickey looked up when Ian came back to the room. He didn’t say a word, just watched his maybe-boyfriend head over to his bed and flop down with a sigh. He wanted to ask what was wrong. He knew he should ask what was wrong. But things had been weird and tense since their fight in the library and he didn’t want to be the one to break the silence.

            “I’m sorry,” Ian said.

            “What?” Mickey turned around in his chair.

            Ian was propped up on his elbows on his bed, looking right at Mickey. “I’m sorry,” he repeated. “I’ve been a total dick lately.”

            “You were upset.”

            “For what reason? You were right.” Ian fell back on the bed and, eyes on the ceiling, he mumbled, “I think I have what my mom does. Bi-what.”

            “Yeah?”

            “Yeah.” Ian was silent for a long moment and Mickey almost turned back to the security sheet he was reading. At the very least he should cover it up in case Ian walked over. Then Ian said, “So, did you tell Gretchen about the paparazzi problem?”

            “When it happened,” Mickey said. “She said she’d tighten up a bit. She was pissed that Paxton wasn’t there.”

            Ian snorted. “Yeah, he fucked off almost as soon as he saw you outside my class. Probably figured we were headed back to the dorm to fuck.”

            Mickey shook his head. “Dangerous.”

            Ian shrugged. “I probably would’ve done the same.”

            “I wouldn’t have.” Mickey then wished he could swallow his words from the air. “I just mean, you’d think I’d be pretty distracted with you and all, so why leave us alone for the whole walk back to the dorms, you know? It wasn’t safe.”

            “I’m sure Gretchen already chewed him out for it.”

            Mickey stood up from the desk and smoothly flipped over the paper. He walked over to the bed and stopped at the end, silently asked Ian permission. Ian sat up and pulled at his shirt, crashed their lips together. He kissed him lightly at first, then got into it and pulled Mickey on top of him. Mickey laughed and bit kisses down the length of his neck.

            “You’re awful easy today,” Mickey murmured.

            “Don’t get used to it,” Ian said. He kissed Mickey’s neck and his chest and moved his hands down to his belt buckle. “The meds will kill my sex drive.”

            Mickey laughed. “Hmm. Then I guess we’ll be over. I’m only here for your dick, after all.”

            “Fuck you,” Ian said, but there was no bite to the words. He flipped Mickey over and moved his lips down the length of his chest, over the cotton of his t-shirt. He pulled down Mickey’s pants and trailed kisses down the length of his cock. Mickey shivered in pleasure.

            Ian took the head of his dick in his mouth and swirled his tongue. Mickey fought the urge to buck up into his mouth, silently thanked Ian for pressing a hand down against his hip. Slowly, Ian started to work up and down his cock and sucked. His eyes met Mickey’s and they held eye contact through the motion.

            “Ian...” Mickey started. He broke off in a groan when Ian twirled his tongue around his shaft. “Come on,” he whispered. “Just fuck me. Fuck me, please.”

            “You sure?” Ian asked, teasing.

            “Fuck you.”

            “You could. If you wanted.”

            Mickey moaned at the thought of Ian riding him, but his ass throbbed as Ian moved a hand to massage it. He let the thought of switching float away and reached up for the lube by the bedside. Ian made quick work of preparing Mickey and then slicked up his cock. He pressed the tip against Mickey’s hole.

            “Fuck,” Mickey said. “Fuck, fuck, fuck. Why’d we wait so long?”

            “I was mad,” Ian said. “I think horny’s a better side effect.”

            “Much better.”

            Then Ian pushed in and Mickey forgot how to think, how to breathe. He felt like it was the first time with Ian all over again. Three days was too long to wait. He moaned when Ian hit his prostate and then kissed Ian hard as the pace sped up. Ian’s lips slipped from his to his neck and to a nipple, which he pecked at until Mickey tugged on his hair.

            “Too much?” Ian asked.

            “Just fucking touch me, you dick,” Mickey said.

            Ian smirked and complied. His hand wrapped around Mickey’s cock and he pumped it in tune to his thrusts. When he swirled his thumb over the head, Mickey came with a groan and Ian brought him through it with quick precision. He came minutes later and then pulled out, tossed the condom to the side. He kissed Mickey quick and then rolled to the other side of the bed.

            “Fuck,” Mickey said. “Forgot how good you were.”

            “You got short term memory loss?”

            “Sassy today, Gallagher,” Mickey said, but he couldn’t help his smile. “That going to go away with the medication too?”

            “We’ll see.”

            Mickey quieted at the sadness in his tone and then rolled over to kiss his cheek. He pulled him close to cuddle – even though he wasn’t a cuddler – and pressed light kisses to the side of his face. “Hey,” he whispered. “It’s going to be okay. Everything is going to be okay.”


	25. Chapter 25

Ian was happy for the next few weeks. He didn’t know what he could put down to the meds and what he couldn’t, but life seemed to fall into place for a little while. Mickey was happy to be with him, his security didn’t seem too tight, and the holidays were fast approaching. Between classes on Monday, he decided to call his dad.

            “Hi, Ian for the President?” he said.

            Fiona gushed at the sound of his voice, quick with questions about his life and his days and how everything was going down at school. She even asked if he had anybody special in his life – a question he neatly avoided. And eventually, she handed him off to the President.

            “Hello?” he said.

            “Hey, dad,” Ian said. He took a deep breath and forced himself to relax. Calling the White House was always a production in and of itself, but that didn’t mean he had reason to be nervous. This was still his dad, just his dad. “I wanted to talk to you about Thanksgiving.”

            “Of course you know you’re expected to be here for dinner—”

            “I know. I just thought, well, maybe you might want to meet my roommate? He lives in a bad part of town and I know he doesn’t really want to go home for the holiday and it’d be hell to leave him here, so... if he could come back to the White House?”

            There was a long pause on the other end of the line. “You know there are considerations, Ian. What will it look like, you bringing him home for Thanksgiving?”

            “It’ll look like I have friends,” Ian said, ignoring the implication that the entire world somehow knew he was gay despite his efforts to the contrary. He took a deep breath and leaned up against the English building. “He’s important to me, dad.”

            “We’ll have to fast track his security clearance and do background checks. There’s a lot that goes into you bringing someone home, Ian.”

            “I know.”

            “I’ll do my best,” he said and hung up.

            Ian brimmed with joy. He fidgeted all the way through his next class and quickly walked back to the dorms afterwards. Gretchen had a hard time keeping up to him. He burst into the dorm room and shut her out of it. He flopped down hard on Mickey’s bed and waited for the other boy to look back at him.

            “Guess what?” he said, face brimming with a grin.

            “Your meds failed?” Mickey said.

            Ian threw a pillow at him while he muffled laughter. “No,” Ian said. “I know where you’re going for Thanksgiving.”

            “Yeah, back to Shitsville U.S.A. Mandy says she’s booked for the holidays.”

            “No.”

            “No?” Mickey turned around, one eyebrow raised. “Where am I going then?”

            “Home. With me.”

            “The White House?”

            Ian nodded.

            “Ian I can’t... we can’t go to the White House together.” Mickey’s tone held so much sadness, so much pity, that Ian couldn’t get any words out to interrupt him. “I wished we lived in a world where we could, but if this gets out, then we’re fucked. And there’s no going back to what we had before.”

            “No,” Ian said. He shook his head. “I didn’t even tell my dad that you’re my... whatever. I just asked if my roommate could come to the White House with me.”

            “That’s still... that’s risky.”

            “It’s fine,” Ian said. He tried his best to smile in the face of Mickey’s lack of enthusiasm. “We’ll go home and you’ll meet my parents and they’ll love you, because they love everyone; they’re politicians. And we can tell them or not tell them—”

            “Not tell them,” Mickey said, a little aggressively.

            Ian nodded. “They’d be fine with it.”

            Mickey shook his head.

            “They know I’m gay. It’s just not public knowledge. It can’t be.”

            “That’s not the problem, Ian.”

            “Then what’s the problem?”

            Mickey opened his mouth, then closed it. He shook his head like there was no way he could say it and turned back to his desk. “Fine. It’s whatever. We’ll go to the White House for Thanksgiving, I guess.”

            “Okay,” Ian said, his good mood all but gone. He got off of Mickey’s bed and headed over to his own desk to study for his psychology quiz.


	26. Chapter 26

Mickey knocked on the door to Gretchen and Paxton’s room late at night. He wore jeans but no shirt, had even pulled on the jeans as little more than an afterthought. Gretchen came to the door in an oversized t-shirt and let him in without a word.

            “We got a call,” she said. “Wondered how long it would take for you to get the news.”

            “Is the President worried?”

            “Just wants to know how impossible it would be to get you through White House security under normal circumstances,” she said. She sat down on the bottom of her bed and shrugged. “I told him with the number of background checks we would have done on a real potential roommate, it’d be doable to get you in for Thanksgiving. Even on short notice. So that’s not going to be a problem.”

            Mickey sat back in the chair at the desk. “You know what the problem’s gonna be.”

            Gretchen nodded.

            “Where’s Pax?”

            “Family emergency,” she said. “That’s the other thing I needed to talk to you about. It’s gonna be just us for a while until they can get a replacement up here, and who knows how cool that replacement’s going to be with you fucking the President’s son. You’re going to have to be a hell of a lot more careful.”

            “I’m careful, he’s not.”

            “You can’t blame everything on him.”

            Mickey sighed and swung the chair from side to side. He didn’t really know why he had come to see her. She couldn’t tell him anything that he didn’t already know. Ian was literally taking him home to meet his parents, a definite couple move, and he couldn’t be seen as being with the President’s son. If he was, he’d be fired immediately along with the rest of the team.

            “What are we going to do?” Mickey asked.

            “We’re going to do what we always do,” Gretchen said. “We protect the President’s son. And the best way to continue to do that is to go to the White House with him and pretend that everything is all right.”

            “And how likely is that to go our way?”

            “Very unlikely.”

            “We need a plan.”

            Gretchen nodded. “You got one?”

            “I’m an asshole,” Mickey said. He made sure to meet Gretchen’s eyes so he could gauge her reaction, but so far she was impassive. “The worse I can be, the more I annoy the President and his family and Ian, the less likely Ian is to do anything couple-y or try to tell his father that we’re together. So, as long as I play the part of the shit-talking, Southside Republican I am, even at the President’s own dinner table, we should be safe from major retribution.”

            Gretchen nodded. “And you can’t act too knowledgeable about the White House. You have to be impressed by it. Let Ian give you a tour, show it off. It’s one of the only good things he’s got going for him.”

            Mickey agreed and made a mental note to file away everything he knew about the White House. “Last thing,” he said. “The Secret Service, do they know about the operation or do we have to tell them so that no one’s saying hello to me or anything?”

            “I’ll make sure no one blows your cover,” Gretchen said.

            Mickey nodded but continued to sit there for a long moment. He had no idea what was left to say, but moving back to the twin bed to let Ian wrap around him just felt wrong. He was lying to him, had been lying to him, for months, and now everything might come apart at the seams and he had no idea how to deal with that.

            “Do you think...” Mickey trailed off. He cleared his throat. “Do you think all of this was just a terrible idea?”

            Gretchen smiled. “It was the President’s idea.”

            Mickey snorted. “I know. But, everything else. Everything I’ve done to keep him safe, to keep his secret... was it a mistake?”

            “Probably.”

            Mickey laughed. “Thanks for making me feel better.”

            Gretchen reached forward and grabbed his hand, squeezed his fingers tight. “Hey, don’t worry about it. You and me? We’re in the same boat here. And my boats don’t sink.”

            “If this goes down, he’s gonna hate me.”

            “No.”

            Mickey nodded.

            “He loves you.”

            “I love him too,” Mickey said and he was surprised to find that the words rung true. He squeezed Gretchen’s hand tighter. “Promise me this isn’t going to end badly.”

            She faked a smile. “I wish I could.”


	27. Chapter 27

Ian took a deep breath as the car rolled through the White House gates. Mickey squeezed his hand and Ian tried not to rely on that pressure, knew he’d have to give it up as soon as the doors opened. He was on his own with his family, whether Mickey was there or not. And he hoped that his father would understand why it was important to him that Mickey was there. He hoped his father would accept Mickey.

            The doors opened and their fingers separated. An assistant greeted them both cheerily and started the White House tour without delay. Ian watched Mickey closely, watched his eyes shift over the walls and away. Silently he cursed himself for having asked for this. Mickey showed no interest in the different molding on the walls or the trivia facts and of course he wouldn’t. He was flunking Shakespeare.

            Finally they reached the residence and Lucy took over the tour. She greeted Ian with a warm hug and Mickey with a smile and a handshake. Mickey looked amused at the formality of it all and glanced Ian’s way for the first time in what felt like forever. There was a smile in his eyes and Ian relaxed ever so slightly.

            They circled the residence rooms, Lucy’s tour complete with a joke to keep Ian’s bedroom door open, to which Mickey replied, “Oh, we’ve been breaking that rule, miss.” To Ian’s intense relief, Lucy laughed.

            Then they sat down to dinner with the President. Ian didn’t realize how intimidating his dad could be until that moment, with the long dining room table, the security lining the walls, and the finest silver on the table. They stood standing until his dad asked them to sit and then took up the carving knife for the turkey.

            All went well until Lucy, halfway through her dinner, asked, “So, Mickey, what is it you’re majoring in?”

            Mickey didn’t bother to swallow his turkey. “Not majoring, miss. Taking some courses, seeing what’s out there, and then, who knows? Not like I’ll probably end up being anything anyways.”

            Lucy blinked. “Excuse me?”

            “I’m from the Southside,” Mickey said. “Scholarship itself was lucky, but if you think I’m getting a job...” He laughed, open-mouthed around potatoes. “Well, you’ve got another thing coming.”

            “I’ve got...” Lucy began. She shook her head. “Well, certainly something at the school must interest you.”

            “The clean water.”

            Ian attempted a laugh but ended up choking on his food. He kicked Mickey under the table, but it didn’t seem to do any good. The next words out of Mickey’s mouth were, “I don’t think scholarships like mine should exist anyways. The government paying for my schooling? A little too close to communism for my taste.”

            “That was my idea, you know,” Ian’s dad said. He said it with a smile, but there was an intensity to his voice that couldn’t be missed.

            “A dumb one,” Mickey said.

            Ian kicked him again.

            “What?” Mickey said. “What has this guy done for the country other than try to destroy it? He’s got these socialist healthcare moves and military strategy that involves less military and he’s trying to destroy private business.” Mickey reached for the wine bottle and poured himself a glass. He then downed it like it was water. With a burp, he added, “That’s no way to run a country.”

            “I suppose you think you could do a better job?” Ian’s dad said.

            “I think any idiot could do a better job.”

            Ian stepped down hard on Mickey’s foot. Mickey gave him a look and shut up for a second to shovel more potatoes into his mouth. Ian looked between his parents, tried to gauge their reactions, but they were masters at political indifference. Ian leaned close to Mickey and whispered, “What the hell are you doing? This is my family.”

            “I’m just telling the truth,” Mickey said, not quietly.

            “The truth?” Ian’s dad repeated. “Tell me, what else do you think is the truth?”

            “Well, your campaign promises were a joke. Education is worse now than it was before you were elected.”

            “It takes time to implement a plan.”

            “How much time?” Mickey waved a fork in the President’s direction and a Secret Service agent took a step forward. Mickey dropped the fork. “Because you’ve been in office, what, a year? A year and I’ve seen no progress from you. Isn’t the first year when new Presidents get most of their work done before the second campaign has to start?”

            Then Mickey laughed. “Actually, on second thought, don’t get me started on your next campaign.”

            “And why not?”

            “Because you really want to drag your family through that for another couple years? How long do you think you’re going to be able to keep all the secrets you’re juggling?” Mickey abruptly swallowed when Ian grinded his heel down on his toes. With a smile, Mickey said, “I’m just saying.”

            Lucy looked Ian’s way with a tight smile. “Well, you’re certainly making colourful friends at college.”

            “This is what you get when you don’t vet his roommate,” Mickey said, shaking the fork again. He smiled and potato was stuck in his teeth. Ian nearly died. “You think you’ll get a nice Democrat, but you end up with my Republican ass. You can blame your own damn scholarships for that.”

            “Mickey,” Ian said. He met his boyfriend’s eyes and silently begged him to shut the fuck up. No such luck. When he realized Mickey was about to say something more, he added, “Maybe you want to go outside for a minute?”

            Mickey stared at him for a second, shrugged, and then dropped his fork. He wiped his face messily on a napkin and then headed from the room without a word. Once the slam of the door left them in silence, Ian said, “I’m sorry.”


	28. Chapter 28

Once in the hall, Mickey pulled a cigarette out of his pocket. He placed it between his teeth and got out his lighter. He was just about to light it when the agent by the door said, “You’re not supposed to smoke in here.”

            “It’s fine,” Mickey said. He lit the cigarette.

            “You’ll set off a smoke alarm.”

            Mickey snorted. He looked the agent in the eyes and blew smoke in his face. He didn’t know the guy’s name, but he’d seen him around before, he was sure. “There are three smoke alarms on this floor. One’s in the kitchens. The other is at the very end of this hall and the last is almost at the other side of the building. Trust me. No smoke alarm will go off.”

            “Whatever you say, Milkovich.”

            Mickey smiled and inhaled a long drag. Then he heard the door close. Ian stood stock still in the hallway, staring at him with a blank expression. For a long second, they stared at each other, and Mickey took that second to convince himself that Ian had heard nothing, knew nothing, and that everything was fine. He faked a smile. “You wanna a drag?” he said and offered the cigarette.

            “The smoke alarms,” Ian said, slow.

            “Yeah, it’s fine.” Mickey waved his hand in the direction of the agent he’d been speaking to. Not knowing the guy’s name was suddenly an advantage. “Apparently we’re far enough away here.” He held the cigarette closer to Ian’s hands, silently begged him to take it.

            Ian shook his head. “I can’t fucking believe this.”

            “Believe it. You can smoke in the White House.”

            “Fuck you.” Ian turned hard on his heels and started down the hall.

            For a long moment, Mickey just stared after him. Then he swore, loudly, and threw down his cigarette. He stomped it down into the carpet despite the agent’s protest and then took off after Ian down the hall.

            He could feel his heartbeat in his throat. He had no idea how long Ian had stood there, exactly what he knew, but he knew that it had to be bad. Otherwise the look on Ian’s face wouldn’t have been as haunted. The words he had spat his way wouldn’t have had the same bite.

            Ian knew. And Mickey was screwed.


	29. Chapter 29

Ian needed a second to wrap his head around it. Mickey was Secret Service. It made perfect sense now that he thought about it. Why he was allowed to be alone with Mickey in the room or in the library. How they had managed to sneak out of the dorms alone. Why Mickey knew so much about his security protocol. It all fit together like puzzle pieces and he wondered how he could have possibly been so stupid as to have missed it. To have slept with the guy who was supposed to be protecting him.

            “Ian! Ian, wait!”

            Ian turned at Mickey’s voice and flinched back with the other man nearly ran into him. Mickey’s breath came in gasps and he was blurry. Not blurry, Ian was crying. He saw it reflected in Mickey’s eyes, in the way Mickey’s face fell at the sight of him.

            “Ian,” Mickey said, soft.

            “No,” Ian said. “What are you going to say?”

            “It’s trivia?”

            “No. It’s security.” Ian swallowed hard. “When I wanted to be Secret Service when I was younger, a couple of guys told me everything you have to memorize. One of those things? Where the fire alarms are in the White House. Main and residential.”

            “I’m sorry.”

            “How could you?”

            “I didn’t know you,” Mickey said. “I was already going to be on your detail and when I was told to do it undercover... I’ve got the background, I’ve got the sob story, and I needed the job. It wasn’t that much different from what I was already going to be doing.”

            “But once you got to know me,” Ian pushed. “Once you kissed me, once you slept with me, once you...” Ian swallowed the words and shook his head. “I loved you.”

            “Nothing’s changed, Ian.”

            “Everything’s changed!” Ian took a step back. He felt like the room was spinning. Usually when the whole world fell off kilter, it was Mickey’s arms he ran into, but now he couldn’t. He didn’t even know who Mickey was anymore. “You can’t just lie to me for months, for our entire relationship, and expect things to be fine once it all comes out.”

            “You needed the protection,” Mickey said, “and you refused to take it.”

            “We had sex.”

            “Ian—”

            “You’re not going to logic your way out of this! Tell me what we had was all in my head. Tell me you did it to protect me, and we’re fine. In fact, we can go back to the school right now. But if any of this was real to you, then how could you lie to me?”

            “You’d prefer it to be fake?”

            “Yes, I would. Because then at least it wouldn’t be a betrayal.”

            Mickey stared at him, blue eyes wide with disbelief. He shook his head. “I can’t tell you that.”

            “Then leave me the fuck alone.” Ian turned and walked away, looking for space. But every turn he took, he heard someone reporting his location. He could feel the Secret Service surrounding him, the oppressive heat of the White House, the claustrophobia that came with its walls.

            He turned into the nearest bathroom and splashed water on his face. Looking in the mirror, he met his own eyes and forced the world to keep spinning on course. He was still himself. So Mickey had lied to him. So what? There were other people to deal with too, other issues other than his broken heart. Like the fact that his father had secret security on his tail.

            With a huff, he headed straight for the Oval Office and bypassed Fiona without a word. PKR stopped speaking immediately and, with a nod from the President, disappeared into his own office. Ian stopped right in front of his father’s desk and was about to say something when he was interrupted.

            “Mr. Milkovich is coming down here to see me as soon as they find him,” he said. “I’m going to fire him.”

            “See if I care.”

            “I thought you might, seeing as you’re... close?”

            “He’s my boyfriend.”

            His father nodded. “What do you want?”

            “I want to talk about the fact that you put an undercover agent in my bedroom,” Ian said. “Not that I’m complaining. Never had my dad pay for my blowjobs before.”

            “Ian.”

            “What?” Ian rested his hands on the desk and leaned closer. “Did you think it’d go better than this, or worse? Because if I wasn’t blinded by how hot the agent was that you chose, then I probably would have figured it out a hell of a lot sooner. And if I had, what then? Would you have let me keep just Gretchen and Pax? Or would a hundred other undercovers come out from the woodwork all around me?”

            His father lowered his eyes.

            “There were others? Who?”

            “No one else as close. But when you went out, there were always other agents around, just in case.”

            “Just in case? How many people have you had following me? Did our deal mean absolutely nothing to you?”

            “I did it to protect you.”

            “Protect me. That’s all you care about. _Protecting_ me. But heaven forbid that I have a life or am allowed to be myself around people or even go to a college I want to go to. No. I have to be ‘protected’ because all I’ve ever been to you and your life is an inconvenience.”

            “That’s not true, Ian.”

            “Why didn’t you just drop me off with Uncle Frank? It was his wife who gave birth to me after all. You could’ve just left me with them and—”

            “You know that wasn’t an option. You’ve seen their house.”

            Ian almost laughed, but he swallowed the sound. He had an undeniable urge to pace, but kept his feet planted. “I might have been happy there though. They might have let me be out. I might not have been stalked all my life by paparazzi and assassins and have to have fucking security on my tail everywhere I go.”

            “You would have been poor and afraid for your life,” he said. He stood from his desk and walked around it. “Now, I know you don’t understand everything your mother and I do for you, but we tried to do our best no matter what. And in this case, extra security was what was best. We never meant for you and your undercover agent to get... close.”

            “You probably didn’t even consider the possibility,” Ian said. He did laugh then, because the thought was ridiculous to him too. What were the chances that they picked another gay guy as his security and that it was someone he was attracted to who liked him back? What were the chances that the first time he fell in love, it would be with a liar? “Fire him. Or throw him in some wing of the house I’ll never go to, see what I care. But don’t you dare put another fucking agent in my dorm room or in one of my classes or anywhere near me. I have half a mind to tell you to take Gretchen off my case if this is how she runs a team.”

            “She’s already gone.”

            “Good. Give me two new agents and only two new ones. And I want the pictures of all the agents under contract so that I can tell if there are any others hanging around.”

            He shook his head. “No.”

            “Give me what I want, or I’m not going back to school.”

            “Ian—”

            “No. I didn’t want to go in the first place. I did that for you and your image. So you’ll listen to me this time or you won’t get what you want for once in your life.”

            The two stared at each other for a long moment. Then the President said, “I can’t let you have only two agents. It’s not safe.”

            “Then I’m not going back,” Ian said. And he left.


	30. Chapter 30

Mickey paced outside the Oval Office. He could hear Ian yelling at his father, but refused to process the words. His brain had short-circuited shortly after his conversation with Ian in the hall and all he had registered since was that the President wanted to see him – after his son was done with him, apparently.

            The door to the office opened and slammed. Ian raced out, didn’t even spare a glance Mickey’s way. Mickey turned to go after him but heard the clear of a throat behind him. He knew that sound well enough.

            He walked into the Oval Office and stopped in front of the President’s desk. He knew he should say something, try to get in front of this before it got out of hand, but he had no idea how to do that. He’d spent the night insulting the President, his family, and Democrats in general. Then he’d gone and blown his cover.

            “Mr. Milkovich,” the President said. He cleared his throat again, coughed. His eyes were on the surface of the desk and not the man in front of him. “I’m sorry.”

            “Excuse me?”

            “You asked me to brief you on anything that might be pertinent to your time guarding my son and I forgot to mention many things about him that might be useful,” he said. He met Mickey’s eyes and he didn’t look like the President. He just looked like a very old, very tired man. “One of those things is that he gets very attached to the people in his presence.”

            “I don’t understand, sir.”

            “He’s under the impression that you’re his boyfriend, Mr. Milkovich.” The President’s voice was stone hard. “And I know that the man I hired to protect my son had enough sense not to do anything untoward with him.”

            “Sir—”

            “Mr. Milkovich, if you had to let my son believe you had feelings for him in order to protect him, that’s fine. I can have you moved to a different station in this White House with little fuss and we can choose any potential reason why it happened. This incident, for example. But if you’ve done anything with my son, whether or not it was in the name of keeping your cover, I’m afraid I simply cannot trust you as a body guard.”

            “Sir,” Mickey began again. He nearly swallowed his words, because he knew he needed this job. But he had to set the record straight. “I came to you because your son made a move on me, yes, but I didn’t... I didn’t pretend.”

            “What are you saying?”

            “I love your son.”

            The President laughed.

            “Please, sir,” Mickey said. “Let me explain.”

            “There’s nothing to explain.”

            “There is. I can’t... I didn’t mean for this to happen. I didn’t ever think that it would. And I did my best to protect him from everything no matter what happened. I’d give my life for him, any day, Mr. President.” Mickey took a deep breath. “Look. Ian’s not the easiest person to guard. And I know he’s mad at me right now, he might never not be mad at me, but I think you know that I’m the best person for this job. I know him better than anyone else and I’ll be able to protect him, no matter what.”

            The President shook his head. “And what’ll you do when he moves on?”

            “Excuse me?”

            “If he doesn’t forgive you,” the President said. His eyes were sad, but there was a hint of a smile on his lips. “Or even if he does. What happens when he moves on? When he proves, once and for all, that he really is his mother’s son and runs off with the next banker or businessman to come his way? You really think when this is all over, when I’m no longer the President, he won’t have some wild oats to sew? He’s never been a good kid, Mr. Milkovich. He won’t suddenly become one just because he doesn’t have a campaign to rebel against.”

            “With all due respect, sir, I think you’re wrong.”

            “You’ve lived with him for three months. I’ve lived with him for nineteen years.”

            Mickey shut his lips around the next words that wanted to come out of his mouth. He couldn’t tell the President that he didn’t know his own son, that he hadn’t ever tried to know him, that he’d stuffed him behind a campaign poster and told him not to speak. He couldn’t tell the President how he knew that Ian was more than what he saw in him and would be able to do anything he wanted with his life. He couldn’t stand there and tell the President of the United States of America that he was wrong, no matter how much he wanted to.

            “Yes, sir,” Mickey said. His heart sunk in his chest.

            “Since it’s clear that things have happened, Mr. Milkovich, I’ll have to let you go,” the President said. “I’m more than happy to accept a letter of resignation by this time tomorrow. If it doesn’t come, then I’ll be forced to fire you.”

            “Yes, sir.”

            The President stared at him for a moment. “Is there anything else?”

            There was a lot else. There was the Southside part of Mickey he’d let out in the recent months that wanted to rage at how unfair this all was, but this wasn’t the place for that part of him. He’d let go of that part of him for a reason. “No, sir,” he said.

            Mickey stepped out into the office and sat down against the wall to breathe.

            “Tough break,” Fiona said. She didn’t look up from the paperwork she was writing on. “I thought you deserved a second chance.”

            “Thanks.”

            “He’ll miss you.”

            “He hates me,” Mickey said. Then he stood. He offered Fiona a false smile and started off through the halls, taking his time as he walked around the White House for the last time. His words seemed to echo off the walls and come back to him like shooting rockets. It was the first time he’d let himself admit it in the hours that had passed since the end of dinner. Ian hated him. And that was that.


	31. Chapter 31

Ian looked up at a knock on the door. He knew the Roosevelt room wasn’t the best place to hide – after all it was covered in windows – but for years he had sat and done his homework in a corner while meetings went on there. It felt safe. The agents didn’t come inside, but they could see him, and on the rare occasions when it was empty, it was the truest solitude that he knew.

            Fiona stepped in and said, “Hey. Wild Thanksgiving.”

            Ian snorted and wiped away his tears. “I’m sure you’ve had worst.”

            “Well, we roasted a bald eagle once.” She settled down beside him on the floor. “But I don’t think anyone’s boyfriend has turned out to be Secret Service before. Rich, yes. And a car thief. But not Secret Service.”

            “What was worse? The car thief part or the rich part?”

            Fiona was silent a moment while she considered this. “The worst part was that he lied about his name.”

            “Oh, god,” Ian said. “Do you think Mickey’s even his name?”

            Fiona laughed. “I’m sure it is.” She rubbed circles down his back. “I heard a bit of what went on in there. You really not going back to school?”

            Ian shrugged. “I never wanted to go in the first place.”

            “I’d kill to go to college.”

            “Then you go. I’ll sit at my dad’s desk.” Ian let his head fall back against the wall. “I’m so sick of the argument that just because college is a privilege I have to take advantage of that privilege. I’d be happier in the army than I was in college. The best part of college was Mickey.”

            They let the silence fall between them. Ian closed his eyes and listened to people move through the halls. The White House never slept, no matter what, and on a night like tonight, when the President was firing people and scandal was abound, there was no doubt that everyone would be awake late into the night despite the holiday. Ian almost wished he had found out on a different day simply so that the staff could go home to their families.

            “You know,” Fiona said slowly, “he seems to love you a lot. And if you feel the same way, I don’t think this is the kind of thing you should let get in the way of that.”

            Ian turned his head towards her and cracked open one eye. “This kind of thing? You mean the kind of thing where he was lying for me for the whole time I’ve known him? Yeah, not a big deal at all.”

            “Well, I forgave Jimmy. And maybe in the long run that was a mistake, we loved each other. And you don’t just throw that kind of connection away.”

            “I’m surrounded by liars, Fi. Have been ever since dad got his first position in government. Everyone had an ulterior motive and I just thought... when I finally fell in love it would be different. There’d be someone who didn’t want anything else from me.”

            “All Mickey wants is to protect you.”

            Ian shrugged. “I guess.”

            Fiona wrapped an arm around him and hugged him tight. “You really don’t want to go back to school? Then I’ll tell Lip you’ll come help him out with the kids so he can work more on his school. And then you can live closer to your roots and the press can have whatever field day it wants with why. I’ll campaign for them to spin it as charity.”

            Ian laughed. “What about familial love?”

            “Spotty territory what with Monica and everything,” Fiona said. She smiled brightly and added, “Don’t give up on Mickey, okay? He doesn’t seem like the type that just gives up on you.”

            “And if he is?”

            “Then you’ll know soon enough, won’t you?”

            Ian nodded and leaned into her shoulder. Despite growing up with Lucy, Fiona was always the closest thing that he had to a mom. And he was glad that she was there for him right then when he had no clue what the fuck he was doing.


	32. Chapter 32

Mickey packed up his side of the room as slowly as possible even though he knew that Ian wasn’t coming back. A group of White House staffers had come by earlier to grab Ian’s things but Mickey still held out hope that he might come back for one last look or even just to say goodbye.

            Mickey had called Mandy and she’d said she’d have a room ready for him. A job, too, if he needed it. He tried not to be offended at the offer. He had been a White House Secret Service agent, but he couldn’t deny that he’d need the money soon enough and eventually some version of the story would break. He’d been kicked from the President’s son’s security team; it was enough of a scandal for any tabloid.

            He finished packing three hours after the White House staff and two hours after Gretchen. She had gone on without him and he couldn’t gauge whether or not she was mad at him. He shouldered his bag and got in the taxi waiting for him downstairs, pulled out his phone as soon as he sat down.

            His fingers fluttered over the words of a text message he wouldn’t send. He wanted to tell Ian everything from start to finish – how scared he had been, how much he wanted him, how hard everything had been on him – but the story just never came out the way he wanted. There was no way to justify himself. He’d lied. Plain and simple.

            He ended up texting, _I’m sorry_ and leaving it at that.

            Mickey watched the college disappear behind him. The airport was a drag and the flight back to Chicago far from stimulating. Mandy picked him up from the airport, kept up a steady stream of conversation all the way to the hotel, and failed to mention Ian’s name even once. Mickey wished she would. He wished he had an excuse to talk about him. But if she wanted to keep quiet about it, he would too.

            The story broke two weeks later, but focused on Ian’s departure from school. Mickey’s dismissal was added as an afterthought and brought no extra press his way. His heart ached to see the side view of Ian’s face on the magazine cover, to see new agents ushering him away. He almost wanted to be named as Ian’s boyfriend, for everything to come out, but he knew that would only make everything worse.

            Mandy stopped by the kitchens one day to watch him wash the dishes. After a couple of minutes, she said, “Are you okay?”

            “How do I seem?” Mickey didn’t look up from the plate in his hands.

            “Fine.”

            “Then let’s assume I’m fine.”

            Mandy sighed. She stepped closer and leaned against the counter, turned off the water. Looking him in the eye, she said, “I keep waiting for you to open up to me about what happened and... nothing. Are you really just okay? Or do you need to sit down and talk about it?”

            “I don’t know if I can,” Mickey said. He flicked soapy water her way and managed a small smile. “It’s not... He wanted it not to be real. Maybe it’s better to pretend that it wasn’t.”

            “Better for who? Right now you’re hurting yourself and you’re probably hurting him and no one is benefitting from pretending that everything is okay.” Mandy undid the tie on Mickey’s apron and pulled it over his head. “Go. Now.”

            “Where?”

            “I don’t know. The White House? Where is he?”

            “I can’t just go to the fucking White House.”

            “You have friends there. You can do anything.” Then Mandy stood there and stared at him until he stepped away from the sink. She made a little shooing motion with her hands and he started out of the kitchen, out of the hotel.

            Mickey had no idea what the fuck he was doing. All he knew was that one second he had been standing in the kitchen and now he was on his way to the airport. He landed in D.C. late in the afternoon and headed with no plan towards the White House.

            He got to the gate and recognized the security guard. With a broad smile, he walked up and said, “Hey, Jenkins. Let me in?”

            “Let you in? You were fired.”

            “Yeah, but I got nothing on me, you can check. Don’t even have a dollar after that last cab ride.” Mickey pursed his lips and stepped closer. “Come on, please, it’s an emergency.”

            Jenkins raised a bushy eyebrow. “A national security type of emergency?”

            “A... puppy love kind of emergency.”

            Jenkins laughed. “I didn’t know you had a guy on the inside, Milkovich. Good for you.” He glanced back at the security cameras. “But you can wait until he’s off shift. You don’t have the credentials to get through anymore.”

            “I can’t wait.”

            “Why not?”

            Mickey searched for an excuse that might work on a hard ass like Jenkins. When he found one, he wiped a hand across his mouth like he might be nervous and leaned in conspiratorially. “I’m proposing,” Mickey said. “And he always wanted it to be at the White House. It wouldn’t’ve been a problem a month ago, but now it is. And I need a little bit of help getting in.”

            “You didn’t think this over earlier?”

            “Spur of the moment kind of thing. I just... got the urge to do it now.”

            “Get the urge again in a couple of months when you can get the credentials,” Jenkins said. He had the good grace to look like he felt bad about it. “I’m sorry, man, but there’s nothing I can do.”

            “Just let me through. Please.”

            “I can’t.”

            His radio made a sound and he spoke into it quickly. Mickey caught very little of the conversation, other than Ian’s codename: Firebird. Mickey looked towards the front gates and saw a car starting for the exit. Without a word to Jenkins, he started to back up until he stood on the street right in the car’s way.

            “Hey!” Jenkins shouted. He got out of his guard booth. “What do you think you’re doing?”

            “Stopping the car.”

            “Stop the car,” Jenkins said into the radio. He grabbed Mickey by the collar and started to drag him off the road. “What do you think you’re—”

            “Ian! Ian!” Mickey shouted. He pulled away from Jenkins and banged on the car as it went by, earning himself a tackle from behind. Jenkins had him halfway into handcuffs, one cheek pressed into the gravel, by the time the backdoor of the car opened. “Ian,” Mickey said, breathless.

            Leather shoes came into view and Ian said, “Let him up.”

            Jenkins hauled Mickey to his feet and let him go at a nod from Ian. Mickey’s hands stayed cuffed behind his back.

            “What the hell are you doing here?” Ian asked.

            Mickey took a second to take him in. He was dressed to the nines in a black tuxedo with a neat bowtie. His hair was gelled back and his shoes looked like they cost more than his college tuition.

            “What are you doing?” Mickey said.

            “Charity event,” Ian said. He ran a hand self-consciously through his hair, winced when it crunched under his hand. “My dad thought it might be good for my image.”

            Mickey nodded. He had a hard time focussing on the words when Ian looked so good. “Did you get my text?”

            “Yeah.”

            “I don’t know why I’m here,” Mickey said. “My sister said...” Mickey glanced around at the number of people listening to them. There were at least seven agents in earshot, plus another three most likely in the car. “Is there somewhere private we can talk?”

            Ian eyed him for a moment, then nodded. He ordered the handcuffs taken off, brushed away protests that Mickey was a danger, and walked to the backseat of the car. He asked the driver to leave them for a minute and Mickey closed the door once he slid in after him.

            “What do you have to say?” Ian said.

            Mickey took a breath, but it was hard to form words once he faced those blue-green eyes again. “I’m sorry,” he said, “for everything. I never should have lied to you and I never should have gotten involved with you and I never should have let it get too far. I should have known better. But something about you... it just made me want to forget everything I learned about guarding.”

            “So, what? You risked my life because of that?”

            “I risked everything for you,” Mickey said. “And I can’t... I can’t just let that go. I know you wanted it all to be fake but I can’t pretend it wasn’t real. I loved you. I do love you.”

            “Mick—”

            “Please. If you care about me even a little bit, if you even just care about me as a friend, then—”

            Ian shut him up with a kiss. Their lips moved together slowly, naturally, and when Ian finally pulled away, he said, “Then what?”

            “Hear me out,” Mickey whispered.

            “Mm.” Ian kissed him again, three light pecks, and then pulled back. “I guess I could hear you out.”


	33. Epilogue

Ian watched his dad get sworn in as President for the second time. He drank beer from the bottle and twirled it to get the sun right on the TV screen. Really, he had no interest in the procedure, but once it was done he could stop worrying for once. No longer would his sexuality be a campaign secret. In four more years, his dad would never have another job. And he could weather four years of low ratings if it meant Ian finally got to be free.

            Mickey flopped down next to him and grabbed the beer from his fingers. The two had lived together for nearly two years, were engaged to be married, and looking forward to the press coverage on their front lawn once Ian came out. Mickey worked security for a small firm and Ian had taken on a large role at a local charity. He had plans to join the military once his dad was out of office, but for the moment he was content to spend his days down at the animal shelter.

            “That’s it,” Mickey said once the ceremony was finished. “You’re free.”

            “Define free,” Ian said. He looked over at his boyfriend and smiled. “I’m still going to have security up my ass no matter what.”

            Mickey grabbed the back of his neck and pulled him in for a rough kiss. When their tongues touched, he pulled back to whisper, “You’re never going to let that go, are you?”

            Ian shook his head. “Never.”

            Mickey sighed into the next kiss and then pulled away. “At least my training will come in handy once the paparazzi starts asking questions. I can beat the shit out of one of them and send a message.”

            “Better if you don’t get an assault charge,” Ian said. “You’re no longer protected by the White House.”

            “And whose fault is that?”

            “Yours.” Ian smiled and kissed his boyfriend again, hard. He pulled Mickey down on top of him, winced when he heard the beer bottle fall. If it stained the carpet, the landlord would have his ass, President’s son or not. Still he could barely be bothered to care as Mickey’s hands explored down his torso and his lips bit into the skin of his neck. Absently, Ian said, “I’ll need to draft the press release...”

            “Later,” Mickey said. “Let’s enjoy just a few moments of peace.”

            Ian would have laughed had Mickey’s lips not found his again.


End file.
